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Contributed commentary by Miyo Kachi on the growth of Clarksville:

While there are a lot of good things that Clarksville’s growing population makes possible, I will admit I feel mixed about our ongoing expansion. Having lived here since 2001, I have seen a lot of change in our neighborhoods that I am concerned about. Not only is there much less green space in many neighborhoods, there is a lot more traffic. With more traffic, not only does it often substantially take longer to get anywhere by car, it is getting more dangerous to try to get anywhere on foot. Even if one isn’t trying to “get somewhere,” walking in areas that used to seem walkable in one’s near neighborhood is less safe.

In the first week of December, a middle school student at West Creek was hit by a car while walking to school. The city councilperson representing Ward 5, where this accident happened, asked for a police report on the location surrounding the accident site. From the police report, she learned that there have been 57 accidents along the section of Peachers Mill Road near the school in the past three years. I am not a traffic engineer, but these numbers make the area sound like an ongoing accident waiting to happen.

I think we can and must shed some light on what is happening. One way we can bring some attention to this is by requesting a walk audit of the area. The Montgomery County Health Council conducts walk audits and documents what they find. I am planning to attend an upcoming meeting of the council to request an audit of the area near West Creek.

But I think that this accident-prone area is just one indication of a more systemic problem in the way we design and plan for growth in our city. We are too automobile-centric. I somewhat recently started learning about a nonprofit organization, Strong Towns, that is working to make the quality of life in cities better in a variety of ways. It harnesses the insights of city planners so that we can learn from the mistakes other cities have made as they grew rather than repeat them. If you are interested in learning about what we can do to improve the quality of life here as Clarksville grows, the group Clarksville Strong Towns meets the third Sunday of the month at 1:30 p.m., usually in the small meeting room at the Clarksville-Montgomery County Public Library.

Miyo Kachi

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