This blog study will cover one of the most infamous impoverished neighborhoods in Columbus, Linden.  North and South Linden combined averages a crime rate that’s about 120% over the national average.  The level of poverty can be inferred by the visible food deserts and the unmaintained sidewalks, as well as the vast number of empty lots.  The traffic in this neighborhood along its main street, Cleveland Ave, has moderate to high traffic, with low lighting that’s only prominent in commercial areas.

The only prominent source of healthy food come from grocery stores.  There aren’t many grocery stores in Linden besides Save A Lot and many small local food marts.  None of these options have any efficient healthy options inside of them as they sell mostly foods that are cheap and high in calories.  The only healthy foods in Linden are found in the produce section of Save A Lot, which aren’t the best quality of foods than a healthy grocery store such as Whole Foods Market, and take a lot of time and culinary experience to produce meals.  There are a few local healthy restaurants, however they aren’t as commercial and convenient as a Taco Bell or McDonalds to be recognized.  Because of this lack of commercial grocery stores as well as a lack of healthy food options, this neighborhood of Columbus is food insecure.

Linden can be considered both a food desert and a food swamp in certain aspects.  Because Linden has Save A Lot with a produce section, there is access to nutritious food, however that access is very lackluster and thin. Linden is very prominent in fast food chains, which allows it to be called a food swamp in many aspects, however this creates a problem in the overall health aspect of the foods available.

This issue can be fixed with action upon a combination of issues surrounding health education, economic development, and access to nutritious food.  Simply adding a Whole Foods Market into the commercial food areas won’t solve this issue.  In that scenario, the Whole Foods Market wouldn’t get much business because the primary target market, the impoverished community, doesn’t know much about eating healthy, nor would they be ready to make such a huge change to their diet.  The consumers most likely don’t have the good health education as a result of their low land values, which leads to low school funding.  Families who grow up in these environments don’t know where healthy foods are, or how exactly to eat healthy, so they develop a generational habit of eating unhealthy foods.  This creates difficulty in families in this area to shop at the market, which could put the market out of business, making this environment to put the market less favorable than a suburban or wealthier neighborhood.  With improved economic development of the neighborhood of Linden, the schools would be better funded, which would begin a long term spark that would allow students to be interested eating healthier.  This would make areas like Linden more economically favorable to install a healthy food store without it being such the economic risk that it is now.

Ohio State Campus Planning

I love how this blog allowed me to explore an obscure part of campus across a pedestrian bridge with a BEAUTIFUL view of the lake, campus, and downtown Columbus!

Sidewalks

On campus, all of the sidewalks were perfectly lined with very adequate widths for walking.  It’s amazing how all of the sidewalks are all connected, even beyond streets and throughout campus.  A perfect example is how the sidewalks from Knowlton leads all the way to the Oval, a huge sequence of connecting sidewalks that makes navigating campus a lot quicker and efficient, as well as to West Campus.  The sidewalks on campus are all kept up and very clean, with no cracks or damage to be seen.  However, this all comes to a quite dramatic change once we move off campus where we would find more cracked and uneven sidewalks.  In the image below, there’s a sidewalk that stops and leads me into the street without a pedestrian cross lane.  Some of the sidewalks, such as the commercial side of High Street, also have brick decor implemented into it.  While this makes the side walk look beautiful, it makes the sidewalk a safety hazard when using a skateboard or scooter because the bricks make the smooth ground uneven and bumpy, which can cause whiplash, dizziness, and injury.

Street Safety

Within campus, all of the streets are small 2 lane roads with good sidewalks.  This combined with the low traffic on campus makes crossing the street very easy.  This is complemented by the traffic and pedestrian signals that are easy to see on the street.  However, like sidewalks, street safety becomes harder once the student moves off of campus and reaches the 4 lane roads like High Street.  High Street,  with it’s current state of construction and flawed student cross sections, is an example of where street safety could go wrong.  Because High Street is one of the largest main streets in Columbus with lots of business, there’s a lot of traffic and straight driving.  Therefore, once a car reaches a pedestrian crossing lane without a direct traffic signal, as shown in the first image below, it’s easy to miss this signal, if the signal is even there to begin with.  Most cars wont stop moving until the student just walks into the street, which is VERY dangerous.  Even at crossing intersections, some drivers will still make turns even when the cross signal says to cross.  Despite this, I found intersections to be an easier threat in Columbus with more consistent cross walking technology than Cleveland.

Traffic Flow

As mentioned earlier, there are mostly 2 lane roads on campus and 4 lane roads off campus on main streets.  Along the 2 lane roads, theres low traffic and good traffic signals for student safety.  On 4 lane roads, traffic is a lot higher, however that usually depends on the density of business along that street.  Traffic isn’t usually an issue on main streets such as Woodruff (Woodruff Bridge is the lowest image below.).  Main streets that intersect through campus, such as Woodruff and Neil, switch from 4 lane roads to 2 lane roads until it leaves the other end of campus.  This completely slows traffic within the campus area to keep students safe, so a faster route to drive could be around campus.  However streets that don’t cut through campus and remain 4 lane roads, like Lane and High, have higher traffic and higher risk.  High Street, being the most prominent main street on campus, has a lot of traffic issues with it’s construction and pedestrian cross sections.  As mentioned earlier, most cars drive past the pedestrian lines until the either the student crosses the street or a car stops at the pedestrian line.  When this happens, it could congest traffic unexpectedly without a traffic signal in sight.  This issue is made worse with the construction on the road, which completely closes off a full lane, which also congests traffic.

Building Use

Ohio State’s campus is mostly composed of residential and lecture halls, with lots of diversity depending on location.  A lot of the oldest buildings on campus are still available there.  Orton Hall is still the oldest building on campus, and University Hall, despite its multiple remodels in the past century, is the oldest building model on campus.  Ohio State’s campus shines in history and the building use is working to preserve the campus’ rich history.  Despite with OSU being the second largest college campus in the country, everything is within walking distance.  High Street, despite its prior issues, is one of the best zoned areas about campus.  Everything a student would want and need is there, including the best commercial restaurants country wide, really good small businesses, Target, Barnes and Noble, and much more.  It’s also a good road that links North Campus and South Campus.  It was a good idea for OSU to expand housing, recreation, and dining into North Campus instead of demolishing the buildings.  The hospital and water chilling stations are also zoned well.  The building shown below is the chiller station, which is put in a place on campus where most students don’t visit, which is 12th street where the hospitals are.  Despite hospitals being in an obscure place on campus, it very walkable which is EXTREMELY essential for the well being of the students.

Green Space

Ohio State shines green!  There are countless green spaces throughout campus such as the Oval, South Oval, Mirror Lake, the iconic Buckeye Grove, and the list goes on forever.  Not only does this make the air quality and green thumb at OSU amazing, it also creates an incredible area to relax, meet, and study.  Green spaces are also incorporated into the sidewalks as well.  There’s grass and trees planted along the sidewalks, and we can sometimes see this development.  This tour exposed me to the beautiful green space that is the riverwalk.  There’s a lot of preserved nature there and it’s as beautiful as it is a great place to jog, bike, skateboard, and relax.  While the many clouds of flies were a pain to walk through, its calming to know that they’re a result of nature.