I was taking one of my walks at work this afternoon when I had a very odd realization: the area that I work in could almost manage to be a walkable community. There’s housing, 2 grocery stores, a couple of restaurants, a coffeeshop, and a handful of non-service sector employers in a radius of a mile or so. Everything’s a bit far apart to be genuinely walkable, but it’s definitely a manageable space with a bike or scooter. I don’t expect that out of Lacey, which is one of those sprawltacular places, but somehow it’s all come together like that in this one area. I just wish there was less parking and a non-Starbucks coffeeshop. I would be thrilled to have free wifi walking distance from work. And if there weren’t so many vast (and often empty) expanses of parking lot, there could be more of everything else, including park-like spaces.
(This being among other things, one of my blogging resolutions for the new year: to post more observations & ideas right as I think of them, rather than waiting.)