Always kind of weird seeing our brave little state on the Fediverse. This is Church Street in Burlington, Vermont, kind of the epicenter of local commerce in the state besides all the microbreweries.

I would like to mention some things about Church Street and Burlington in general. This photo does not show the four story parking garage that sits next to Church Street or the underground garage by “The Pit” The CityPlace development, aka “The Pit” being a semi-failed construction and gentrification project by the local police’s best friend and city mayor Miro Weinberger. Good article on “The Pit” from VTDigger here. Burlington is also in the midst of a huge housing crisis as pretty much all apartments are owned by three shitty landlords, no new ones are being built, and as it is a college town, studio apartments are usually upwards of $1100 a month. And Burlington is partly home to Vermont’s worst Stroad Shelburne Road. Burly also lacks pretty much any bike friendly architecture besides a leisure bike path by the waterfront and a few painted lanes in random spots around town.

Burlington itself is unique being Vermont’s largest city, with only a population of 45,000ish or around 7% of the states total population. The rest of the state pretty much being rural and most Vermonters commuting by car anywhere from like 30 minutes to 1 hour one way to their jobs due to lack of affordable housing or any public transport outside Chittenden County.

While I do love Church Street myself it is important to not ignore the context around it, in hopes we may improve the town as a whole.

one interesting thing i noticed from seeing pics of car-free american streets here and on reddit is that although they’re rare, when they are made, they’re usually of surprisingly high quality 🤔