It’s been some time since Project DeRenne has made the news. The last mention I could find of the once-much-talked-about plan to alter Savannah’s DeRenne Avenue is a WSAV-TV story from July: Project DeRenne Among Those That Would Receive Funds from Transportation Sales Tax.
My thoughts returned to DeRenne Avenue recently, when news began to emerge about a plan for an elevated expressway on Abercorn Street. The Savannah Morning News’ Eric Curl explains the proposal includes, “An elevated expressway that would stand about 35 feet above Abercorn’s median and separate regional and local drivers.”
Project DeRenne, too, sought to balance the needs of regional drivers, local drivers and residents who live along the corridor. When DeRenne Avenue became a major route for commuters from western counties, the effects on the neighborhoods it bisects are manifested in both easily recognizable and more subtle ways.
On a sunday morning in January 2008, I tried to document the details of a landscape that most people try to ignore. Here’s what I wrote at that time:
“When a streetscape is designed to maximize the flow of motor vehicles the results are as predictable as they are ugly. Yet we may not comprehend how desolate the built environment becomes when it is designed exclusively to move cars. Traffic becomes a distraction, drawing our attention away from the ways that it degrades the spaces, public and private, at the edge of the roadway. But when we strip away the cars, we can see how much damage they have done. If we continue to put the needs of cars ahead of the needs of people, we’ll get more of the same and likely worse.”
Almost five years later, has anything changed on DeRenne Avenue?
WASHINGTON, DC—Citing the need to safeguard “America’s most vital institutions and politicians” against potentially devastating attacks, President Bush asked Congress to sign off Monday on a $30 billion funding package to help fight the ongoing War On Criticism.
Bush unveils his sweeping new anti-criticism initiative.
“Sadly, the threat of criticism is still with us,” Bush told members of Congress during a 2 p.m. televised address. “We thought we had defeated criticism with our successes in Afghanistan and Iraq. We thought we had struck at its very heart with the broad discretionary powers of the USA Patriot Act. And we thought that the ratings victory of Fox News, America’s News Channel, might signal the beginning of a lasting peace with the media. Yet, despite all this, criticism abounds.”
Critical activities, Bush noted, have not returned to pre-Sept. 11 levels, when well-organized, coordinated attacks on his administration were carried out on a near-daily basis. But in spite of the National Criticism Alert Level holding steady at yellow (elevated), administration officials warn of severe impending attacks.
“We’ve become too complacent,” Attorney General John Ashcroft said. “We’ve grown accustomed to thinking of criticism as something that only happens to people in other political parties. But this administration needs this funding to counter a very real threat to its reputation.”
Ashcroft said the Justice Department, working closely with the CIA and FBI, has identified more than 300 potential targets, ranging from the Bush Administration’s inability to produce the weapons of mass destruction used to justify the war with Iraq to its deficit-ballooning fiscal policies.
“I doubt I could protect my ongoing Halliburton cronyism from critical strikes with just a few million dollars—especially if it was not accompanied by powerful preemptive legislation,” Vice-President Dick Cheney said. “We need to build stronger anti-criticism defense shields in this country. And the time to act is now, before the media say something negative about us.”
If the funding is approved, the Bush Administration will act swiftly to shore up numerous areas of vulnerability. Among the actions: ensuring that the White House is defended against verbal snipers, safeguarding the president’s past illicit actions from biographical weapons, and sealing off the largest sources of domestic criticism by securing and patrolling the nation’s newsrooms.
Congressional leaders are already pledging their support for the plan.
“As government officials, we have an absolute obligation to protect the leader of this country from future acts of criticism,” U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said. “And it will not be cheap, easy, or quick.”
“We’re all in this together,” Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert said. “You attack one American politician, you attack us all.”
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