(Yes, I can selectively suspend my cynicism-that is allowed on the internet, no?) There are long term plans to reroute some of the roads and turn it into more of a grid network time will tell I suppose. As it stands now, downtown is still a morass of wide automotive boulevards the bike sharing, shared use paths, and pedestrian friendly signals are a nice try but have a trying-too-hard, tacked-on feel, unfortunately, as does anything that isn’t organically designed in from the outset.
The county planners and their developer pals are trying the best that they can to turn downtown into less of something that feels like a Blade Runner set after the office workers roll up the carpet at 5 p.m. But it has not fallen ill as have so many malls to dead mall syndrome.
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A nice change of pace.Īnd like every good American midsized city of any cred, Columbia’s “downtown” is anchored by an enclosed mall, albeit predictably surrounded by acres of impervious parking lots that form a veritable moat for any non-automotive shoppers and the denizens of the five-over-one hovels fronting the surrounding ring road, plus a token bus transfer station for our token bus system.
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Unfortunately we do have Rte 29, which effectively severs Columbia between the haves and the have nots, figuratively and psychologically-the closest thing we have to the “other side of the tracks” in a town free of literal tracks.Ĭolumbia’s also heavily treed and wooded, which bucks the trend to come in and clear cut mature woodlands to plop down vinyl sided McMansions with a strip of turf between your wall and the next guy’s just wide enough to fit a weed whacker. And if you still want to get your kicks on 66, we’ve got the nearby Rte 1 (Elkridge/Jessup) and Rte 40 (Ellicott City/Catonsville). Unlike typical American outer ring suburbs which are anchored by traffic choked, soul-less corridors of row upon row of strip stores and sales whores as far as the eye can see, proffering container-ship-imported schlock for the teeming masses (Waldorf/Rte 5, Rockville/Rte 355, etc.)-perhaps with a private developer throwing in a token faux “town center” to get a tax break (Owings Mills, White Marsh)-Columbia is seemingly not afflicted by this. But I’m sure that if you wanted to dwell in concrete jungle, you would be considering one of them or their inner ring suburbs rather than asking about Columbia. With that said, strangely, it isn’t directly connected to either of them via rail transit-pedants please note I said “directly”, the closest MARC stations are in Elkridge and Jessup-which you could view as a good thing or a bad thing. Columbia is a suburb within easy range of its white and blue collar elders, DC and Baltimore, respectively, with all the pluses and minuses they bring.
You know: useful insight.īy the way: I’m a 2.5x the age of your target Reddit demographic-hence, pragmatic and cynical. I will try not to repeat what’s already been said or readily available from the usual sources.
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