This is the image that comes to mind anytime I think about infrastructure. Unfortunately (or luckily, depending on your perspective of the subject) goombas and koopas aren’t quite the infrastructural issues that smart cities have to deal with. AbdouMaliq Simone would even suggest that the infrastructure of modern cities isn’t necessarily just the the streets, the pipes below them, and the electric fiber and fiber optic cables above them both: it can be the people of the city too. (241) Portland, Maine is a fairly homogenous area: even with the East African migration to the area, the city still remains largely white with a fairly large middle class—hardly the class dichotomy that exists in Johannesburg. However, what’s important to realize is that the people share a common reliance on cars to travel to and fro, regardless of distance. What’s also important to realize is that Portland is hardly organized in a way that plays to the benefit of this reliance.

In terms of this infrastructure, I believe that Portland could benefit heavily from a pedestrian/biker-friendly development project. Michael Sorkin suggests that cities (neighborhoods specifically) should be constructed “in a way that binds them to the [human] body and what it can do.” (415) In this case, I interpret this in a way that makes the body a positive attribute in navigating the city, freeing us from the constriction of vehicular movement through naturally human spaces. Many of the streets, especially in Old Port, are cramped, narrow, and one-way, making passage with a vehicle difficult in the first place. In a different direction, Exchange and Franklin Streets represent two of the city’s most obvious boundaries (aside from I-295) and are more or less un-crossable by all but the bravest walkers and bikers. Ironically enough, Mainers would obey crossing the street if there were stoplights and walk signals, but less than a quarter of the crosswalks are supported by these traffic signals. A step from which Portland would benefit would be to close down many of the more narrow streets within the city to pedestrian and bike traffic (much like Bowdoin’s campus) and narrow the Franklin and Exchange street arteries to two-lane roads. A step like this would likely not increase traffic and would even encourage Old Port users to walk the city from the periphery rather than drive to the center and branch outward (which is safer and more practical, for all parties involved.) Bike lanes would also encourage a go-green alternative to driving to work, which would declutter traffic routes, benefit the environment, and encourage a healthful form of exercise. Imagine that—city planning as a solution to America’s “obesity epidemic!” What’s important for Portland to realize is that it is a small and navigable city, and increased vehicle traffic will actually have the opposite effect of decreased traffic: it would discourage users from visiting the city on the bounds of having to navigate the streets and compete with bikes and walkers on the quaintly congested streets of the old city. Even with the cold Maine climate, Portland’s size makes it tolerably navigable by foot and bike even during the winter. If Mainers have any doubt about that, here’s a picture of Copenhagen in January:

Doable? I think so.

Also, even though there is an aspect of Portland that embraces its cobblestone streets, we should recognize that there are smart city options to paving our streets and taking better advantage of our impermeable surfaces. This video details one such smart-city solution:

Its easy to see how such a technology could benefit a city like Portland. Massive solar panel arrays equal big savings in energy expenditure in the long run, and since the buildings in Portland are pretty short, the amount of time that our streets and parking lots would be exposed to sunlight is much higher than in most any other city. The passive snow removal technology would be a huge bonus, saving the city thousands and thousands of dollars in snow removal using clunky plows, followed by massive expenditures in repaving every few springs as a result of the plow’s damaging effect on the roads. No need to salt the streets either, which would be an added bonus to the environment! Portland is a small city, so implementing a technology could be done both cost-effectively and fairly quickly—within a few years if not months, given the funding’s in place.

References:

• Simone, AbdouMaliq. 2004. “People as Infrastructure: Intersecting Fragments in Johannesburg” from People, place, and space reader. [Gieseking et al] Routledge, New York
• Sorkin, Michael. 1999. “Traffic In Democracy” from People, place, and space reader. [Gieseking et al] Routledge, New York
• Images: criticalmass.hu and laestanteriadecho.blogspot.com
• YouTube