Poor Urban Planning in Fort Lauderdale Area (Hollywood, West Palm Beach: city hall, lease)

[HotandHumid]

You have to wonder just who makes the stupid choices about urban planning in this neck of the woods.

Most cities situate their major fountains in the middle of parks so that people can sit around the edges and enjoy the sound of water blocking out urban noise while they picnic, watch light shows and listen to calming music that is sometimes played along with the fountain's water show. Not here. Our major fountain in Fort Lauderdale was built right on the corner of the very noisy and heavily motor vehicle trafficked corner of Andrews Avenue and Las Olas. It's a beautiful fountain and it's too bad someone thought that people would enjoy sitting smack right next to a major street breathing in auto fumes and having the sound of the water blocked out by honking horns, broken mufflers and rushing traffic.

Then you've got the situation of those fake flowers hanging from the light poles downtown that will turn into projectiles during a hurricane as the high winds will most assuredly rip them off the poles and then of course, the city will just buy more and put them up again.

Since Fort Lauderdale is already seeing the effects of global warming with flooding taking place during high tides in the wealthy neighborhoods off on the islands off Las Olas Boulevard between downtown and the beach, which the city will spend over $8 million dollars to try to prevent, you'd think if the city has to have hanging planters that they could put real plants in them that take the global warming gas, carbon dioxide, out of the atmosphere and convert it into life giving oxygen.

And let's not even go into the regularly overflowing trash receptacles at the walkways leading to the beach south of Oakland Park Boulevard in a multi-million dollar home neighborhood. The city could be making beaucoup bucks by putting recycling bins there since recycling companies pay good money for glass and plastic bottles and metal cans that are now just going to landfills which nobody wants to live near and which will have to keep being built as the current ones fill up. I certainly wouldn't want to pay to live in a multi-million dollar home and then drive by overflowing trash barrels in my neighborhood and then watch my tax bills keep going up to pay for landfills that could have been prevented from having to be built.

Then you have the situation in Wilton Manors where all that money was spent to build a new city hall building instead of renovating the old one and for paving a large parcel of land next to it for parking to go to the city hall and other nearby locations and then not allowing driver's to turn left off of Wilton Drive into the parking lot there. Really!

The only way you can get to that parking lot legally once you've driven past it is to drive down a block or so and make a turn near the Dairy Queen and then drive back going east to make a right hand turn into the lot. What a waste of gas just because some idiot of an urban planner didn't think to shorten the median there or take it out so that people could turn left off of Wilton Drive into an expensively built parking lot. You can turn left at the light before the lot and use the east entrance to the lot but most people only realize this after they've gone through the light and didn't realize they couldn't turn left off of Wilton Drive into the city owned parking lot.

And of course, there's the situation in Wilton Manors where people drive around and around in circles through the residential areas making the neighborhoods noisy and traffic congested on the weekends as people look for parking spaces when they can't find them on Wilton Drive, all because Wilton Manors has never put up signage directing people on the Drive to the large parking lot by City Hall where there is usually plenty of parking on the weekends free during the day and charged for after 6pm.

Wilton Manors also took it's once very visible recycling station off of Wilton Drive where people would be more inclined to use it if they knew where it was and moved it behind some buildings south of Five Points on Dixie Highway where hardly anyone knows where it is. You'd think that since Wilton Manors gets paid money for recycled items placed in the recycling containers that they would want to ENCOURAGE people to put recyclable materials in it's containers by having the recycling station where people can easily see it and use it.

Wilton Manors also doesn't seem to have any really teeth when it comes to trying to beautify itself. That big empty lot at the east entrance to the Wilton Drive business area at 5 Points just sits there mostly barren of landscaping. It's owned by Iberia Bank who won't do anything with it, even though the property at the bank office is well landscaped. It was suggested to city officials that they use the right of eminent domain to purchase the lot at market value and put a nicely landscaped corner park there but that fell of deaf ears just was the suggestion that the drivers not be allowed to turn right on red onto Wilton Drive into pedestrian walkways since there's already been so many pedestrians hit by motor vehicles on the Drive.

And then you have the city that calls itself Oakland Park with a major boulevard running through it called Oakland Park Boulevard which doesn't look at all like an oak land or a park since city planners had the majority of carbon dioxide eating, shade producing trees cut down years ago for some reason or the other known only to them in their uncreative and backward thinking minds. Well, now the oceans are rising because of excess carbon dioxide and this area is ground zero in the U.S. for flooding due to global warming but I don't see Oakland Park planting any trees back on Oakland Park Boulevard.

If you decide to visit this area or move here for some of that peace and relaxation Florida is known for, you won't find much of it as this area as it's criss crossed with mostly heavily trafficked traffic streets built to get people to and from the suburbs as fast as possible instead of encouraging economic development in this area where most of the money that is spent in the area is. Instead of trying to find ways to encourage motorists to drive slower and stop and enjoy the area east of 1-95 by shopping and dining here, it seems everything is geared to getting people out to the Saw Grass Mills shopping area and back as fast as possible and this certainly shows with the amount of empty store and restaurant fronts, and empty lots and for lease signs in and around downtown Fort Lauderdale.

If you like to dine outside when vacationing in Florida you won't find much in the way of out door cafes and restaurants that you'd enjoy sitting at like you'll find in South Beach, Key West, Hollywood, Delray Beach, Lake Worth, downtown West Palm Beach and in other progressive thinking communities in South Florida because you will find that if you find an outdoor eating area in this area, it's going to most probably be right on a busy street where rushing traffic will be your main attraction to view and there won't be much in the way of people watching because hardly anyone here bikes or walks anywhere because of the danger that rushing traffic causes to bike riders and pedestrians because hardly any city leaders in the Fort Lauderdale area wants to step forward to do anything about that traffic that increases yearly with no creative urban planning taking place about how to deal with it by the local governments in the Fort Lauderdale area.

[MaxFromPhilly]

You sound like you focus too much on inane things. Do you really look around town and think about carbon dioxide? I know a good therapist who lives/works in Boca...seems like you have Ocd want his #?