Posted on: Saturday, August 31, 2002

Honolulu has potential to be a stunning city

More than 60 years ago, architect and internationally acclaimed planner Lewis Mumford wrote in a report that "Honolulu is the natural stage for a complex and beautiful drama. The blue sea, the mountains, and the tumbling clouds form a landscape that has few rivals as a setting for human activity."

But, he went on to lament, "the city has taken its splendid physical features in a somewhat casual fashion. ... The streets of the city tend — through overcrowding, through congestion of traffic, through indifference to all but the barest physical needs — to become a stony waste: an environment hostile to life: noisy, dusty, ugly, unsafe."

So what's new? We still have the noise and dust and the concrete wastelands. And much of the waterfront is devoted to industrial uses rather than recreation and the contemplation of beauty.

Thankfully, the city has a plan that envisions a future Honolulu with more parks and green space, pedestrian-friendly streets, bike lanes, an open waterfront and vibrant neighborhood business districts.

One vision of a future residential neighborhood in Kaka'ako, for example, shows a square of green lawn and flowers surrounded by low-rise buildings with shopping arcades and trees.

Now, some say the city's vision depends too heavily on the imposed inevitabilities of the proposed Bus Rapid Transit system and lacks a "Hawaiian sense of place."

We take their concerns seriously because we certainly don't want Honolulu turned into Anytown USA.

But isn't that the way things go when there isn't a cohesive plan? Already, Honolulu has its share of neighborhoods jammed with bland high-rise apartment buildings, strip malls and traffic.

At least the city is working on a plan to better integrate commercial, residential and green space. What it needs to do now is get masses of public input so it can incorporate the best suggestions into its master plan. That won't happen unless the public speaks up as this plan goes through the community public hearing process and then is debated at the City Council.

But don't expect the future to bring more roads and parking lots. There's only so much room on an island. So far, Honolulu has strained to be car-friendly, but the operative word here is "strained."

We Islanders must stop living under the illusion that the automobile is the only way to get around and accept public transit in our everyday lives.