Last night, at the request of a few ratepayers I went and had a look at a problem area in their suburb. Clearly it was a problem to some but not to everyone in the area.
These people lived alongside one of the alleyways that run between parallel streets and they are fed up with the appalling behaviour that goes on in that alleyway. Underage drinking – drugs – offensive language – broken glass – rocks thrown on roofs – it all happens in the alleyway.
They want it closed.
Other residents of the suburb say hang on – “you bought a house next to the alley – if you close the alleyway we will have to walk much further to get to the shops and school and the suburb designer thought it should be there.”
They want it left open.
Of course, since the suburb was designed, things have changed. Because of the problems of bad behaviour in our society, designers no longer put narrow dark alleys in suburbs. They include open grassy areas that encourage people to behave decently, if for no other reason than they can be seen.
The alleyway in question was narrow – poorly lit and not far from a very active bottle store. Evidence of poor behaviour was everywhere. Despite the efforts of the residents, you could see where the bottles had been smashed, the overhanging creeper had been set alight, graffiti had been sprayed down the tin fences and all sorts of things had been smoked.
I’m told that at times syringes are found in the alley and on the neighbour’s front lawns.
Of course 99% of this activity is at night.
The other residents of the suburb say: “We want the alleyway to remain. When we are walking the dog at 3pm it is a nice short-cut between streets. When we go to the shop to buy a few things, we now have less distance to carry things home.”
The “close the alley team” says they will have to walk for an extra one to two minutes.
So there’s no easy answer. You can’t open the alley during the day and close it after dark.
At the end we will have to make a decision which of course is what councillors are paid to do.
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December 6th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Hey will looks like a tough decision