First the good news.
Yesterday, during the weekly Sunday bicycle saunter, riding buddy and I came across a father and son playing catch (baseball variety) in the street at the confluence of Rough Rider and Liberty NE. Despite a strong desire to stop and photograph these extremely rare specimens, buddy and I left the pair to continue enjoyment of their in the street activity and pleasantly rolled up Liberty toward the Sandias.
I think it no mistake we saw such a sight at the confluence of Rough Rider and Liberty NE, history, political theory and all that.
Now the bad news.
I’ll start by admitting I could stand to lose a few pounds. That’s not the bad news, except to me, but serves as full disclosure in the rant that follows. During each and every Sunday bicycle saunter, riding buddy and I come across tableaus such as these:
In the effort to secure out schools and school facilities from active shooters and vandalism, we have secured the continued fatness of our citizenry by preventing folks, in particular children, from using these public spaces.
Some neighborhoods have formally and very often informally kept these public spaces open, whether through agreement with the school/Albuquerque Public Schools to not have locks on gates or “fake locks” that only appear secure.
While there are exceptions as illustrated above, our community has generally decided to increase the already increasingly sedentary lifestyle of its citizens in order to protect those attending school part of the time and protect school property all the time. Many feel this is a perfectly valid and correct response to these threats.
I do not agree.
I mourn the loss of these public spaces, and nowhere do I most experience that loss than in every visit I make to this spot:
That UNM isn’t secured by fences, gates and whatnot makes it required cycling for me after another day of cycling past countless de facto prisons that were formerly schools. Naturally, there have been calls to fence the entire university campus, efforts satirized beautifully by Daily Lobo columnist Henry Hammel (alum of Jefferson Middle School, I might add, which also isn’t surrounded by fence/concertina wire to my knowledge).
It is my opinion that in prioritizing safety over access we are essentially destroying the village in order to save it. Eliminating public schools as public spaces not only impacts community physical health but also disconnects these community structures as engaging intellectual and mental health sanctuaries. At least for me, everytime I cycle slowly through UNM I am restored in faith toward education and its ability to bolster and bring together our community.
Chainlink fences and code-entry iron gates do the exact opposite. The physical and mental health community impacts of having locked our schools away are real, lasting, and apparently not going away anytime soon.
Better Burque 
Blogger Note: Comment below from someone wishing to be anonymous (and unable to because WordPress is, WordPress).
This sort of demented thinking is the same reason that engineers design our streets for the 2 hours a day that there’s any appreciable traffic (though rarely actually congested for more than a few minutes here in ABQ) — instead of designing streets how we want them to function the vast majority of the day. So then instead of spending a couple hundred million dollars to fix these problems ONCE, which would make our community more healthy, more affordable, and more socially cohesive… we spend the same amount (or more) EVERY YEAR trying to put bandaids on all of the social ills that cars and our fucked up “transportation system” inflict on everyone.
Not to mention the cost of people who have been needlessly maimed and killed. It’s sick. If Boeing made planes that regularly crashed, or the FAA allowed runways with massive potholes that caused crashes, then heads would roll and there’d be calls for jail time and a complete rethink of how we manage air travel. But Ford, Chevy, Dodge etc and 99% of Traffic Engineers around the country are allowed to do the same thing and it’s just normalized. Disgusting.
Also can I add to your complaint all the parking lots that are empty and surrounded by fences (but not actually gated and locked) which prevent anyone on foot or bike from using these empty spaces as shortcuts or safe pathways between destinations? Even the city does this with its own properties (the planning office downtown is one example) — totally surrounded by iron fencing, but still wide open 24/7 where cars enter and exit the parking lot. So idiotic. If they’re going to secure it, then secure it 100%. Otherwise tear down the fence.
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Wonderful Lobo satire! Tho’ even in 1999 tech surveillance was getting out of hand as I discovered when I was caught by magnetic tag readers as I tried to smuggle a few back-issues of the Economist in my briefcase out of the business school library. I was only trying to borrow them, I would have brought them back …
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I think it’s telling that the two accessible schoolyards depicted are 1) in Nob Hill and 2) marked with signage intended for dog walkers. Notwithstanding the infinitesimal sample size, I say props to the communities with a high percentage of activist residents, who can sometimes force-feed a little sense to the powers that be.
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Several years ago the city bragged on itself for hosting one of the most attended Senior Olympics. But once that was over they went right back to giving senior athletes left overs when it comes to support. The New Mexico state games are very poorly marketed, the put the track athletes on the worst possible tracks, the event is heald in the hottest time of year but they provide LITTLE TO NO SHADE. And now they are locking us out of public scool tracks and tennis courts. Where are we suppose to safely train?
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