Last year, the borough of Highland Park tore out all the sidewalks alongside Raritan Avenue, the primary drag, and constructed new ones. The antique sidewalks, I must mention, had been not only in right situation however almost new; they have been torn up just a year or so earlier to feature new cut back cuts at the intersections. But the present day ones were apparently an essential a part of Highland Park's Streetscape mission, a $2.2 million dollar challenge supposed to upload new color timber, bike racks and out of doors
Now, I might have thought that all this was worth it for the sake of getting some trees planted along Raritan Avenue, because the street had very few mature trees and very little shade in the summer. But the new trees that they've just started planting are those skinny, frond-like kind (Zelkova, according to the sketches for the Streetscape project) that give no shade to speak of; the most they do is filter the light. And what's worse, the few mature trees that already existed along Raritan, providing the few small pools of shade we had in the summertime, have been cut down, leaving only fresh, raw stumps behind.
At the intersections of Third and Fourth Avenues, the sidewalks boasted some much larger holes—each about three feet deep, with the footprint of a large closet. The Streetscape sketches indicated that these were intended as "rain gardens," which help soak up rainfall and reduce runoff. Again, this sounded like a good idea. The holes sat empty, surrounded by orange plastic mesh, for some time; then gradually, they began to be filled in with layers of mesh, sand, dirt, and finally, as of last weekend, some tiny green plants. Walking along the street today, I observed that the newly-planted rain gardens have apparently found another use as trash receptacles. The newly-planted greenery was liberally strewed with juice cartons, candy wrappers, and cigarette packs. I couldn't even try to clean it up, because they're still fenced round with the orange plastic stuff—which is too low to prevent anyone from dumping litter in, but too high to allow anyone to reach in and pick it up again.
I guess we're lucky that we live far enough from the center of town that our neighborhood hasn't been slated for "improvement." I just hope they stop beautifying the rest of the town while there's still anything left of it.
