Columnist’s note: Some of these items may be repeats from older columns, but the ideas are so strong, so important, they bear repeating:

 

1. Daylighted Park River done in sections, like the progress of Riverfront Recapture – first the flower street to the Legislative Office Building – build a bridge for Broad Street. Second section Bushnell Park, Jewel Street, to the Whitehead Highway. Third section from Farmington Avenue behind the Mark Twain House to Capital Avenue at the Aetna Viaduct.

 

The end of the I-84 Aetna viaduct on Capital Avenue should account for a daylighted Park River.

 

The possibilities for cultural vibrancy that come with running water in a central urban location are limitless – look at WaterFire in Providence. Buckets of fire – logs burning in floating steel wire mesh pits – 50 of them, on the river, with music piped along the river.

 

Across the street from Waterfire, a big band and a DJ take turns playing ballroom music for dance lessons, shows and group dances on a floor big enough for hundreds - set up in the middle of an intersection.

 

Whose streets? Our streets. Dancing in the streets. Yeah. Every other Saturday night. Riverfront Recapture is close, but the daylighted Park River could add so much energy flow to the city.

 

2. Sarah Palin’s America to understand that the life in Northeast cities depends on immigrant populations. Without this influx of people to live in our urban spaces, the blocks would be desolate.

 

White flight left the cities a shell. Immigrant vibrancy has reflowered them.

 

While New York City and San Francisco could live without their Chinatowns and still be vibrant cities, without the transplanted nightclubs from Mexico and the trucks selling acupurrias and tostones from Puerto Rico, many of our city streets on a Friday night might be abandoned.

 

Providence, RI has a Broad Street, too, that runs north to south from downtown to Cranston. More than a dozen food trucks of all shapes and sizes and nationalities – Mexican, Dominican, Puerto Rican, Venezuelan and names – La Universidad de Chimi, El Pais de Chimi, El Pueblo de Chimi, Ciudad Chimi.

 

The trucks park in the wide shoulders, alongside restaurants and nightclubs. People stroll down the street, or target their favorite truck and hang out. The sidewalks teem with food and motorcycles and men sitting on chairs on the sidewalk and salsa and rap. Sweet life.

 

Maybe the city could encourage vendors of ethnic cuisines to line up on Friday and Saturday nights on a stretch like Wawarme where the cars line up alongside Colt Park and the Shrine to the BVM.

 

Or maybe on Franklin Avenue, where there is plenty of shoulder and parking. The end result is that the city should do things to encourage and harness this lively momentum.

 

3. Fields of sunflowers. On empty vacant lots. I’m not talking mere guerilla gardening. I’m talking money for Knox Parks to hire Green Teams to till empty lots – like the corner of Park and Main, put topsoil on it, and plant sunflowers. Fields of them.

 

On the corner of Laurel and Case. On the corner of Sigourney and Collins. On the corner of Shultas and Fraknlin. These lots sit empty, creating a hopeless, lonely, abandoned city. Hartford is alive. Plant sunflowers. Make Hartford look pretty.

 

4. The realization of former City Councilman Bob Painter’s vision of a learning alley from the Stilts building on Main Street to RPI’s campus on Pleasant Street. The land where those parking lots sit is too valuable for cars alone.

 

It will be developed, and it should be turned into education and mixed use facilities, the education corridor. A 20-story dorm for college students. Create a policy to put young life downtown.

 

With more young people in the city center, the businesses will come. Young people are always doing interesting stuff, trying to figure out what it means to be human for themselves, and in the meantime provoking thought. We need that in our cities.

 

Build more schools and universities. Not wars. And planes and tanks and guns.

 

6. A neighborhood where the parking lots sit across from the Bushnell, forlorn and wasted by the car culture.

 

7. A transportation hub where you can get all the bus companies. More bus companies service Hartford (Fung Wah, Boston Bus, etc) than just Greyhound and Peter Pan. But because rent at Union Station is so high, not all the bus companies utilize Union Station as the hub.

 

Immediately, we should transform the wasted space under I-84 into a centralized bus station. Call it Union Station Annex. Make that lot cheaper, with just bus awnings, and maybe a cheap set of buildings (they will eventually come down when the highway comes down).

 

But put all the buses in the same place. Maybe that could spur some development at 10 Capital West – the bus companies could put offices there.

 

Maybe I’m dreaming. But at Baramke Haraj in Damascus, Syria, at least 60 bus companies pick up and drop off from their own mini terminals for the myriad routes they run through the desert nation.

 

Hartford, then, can take a lesson and implement a central bus station hub.

 

Plus, the New Britain Busway will end at Union Station. If it is ever built. This makes it even more of a transit hub. The Busway is years away. The central bus station hub move can be done with a quick Court of Common Council action - all buses that serve the city shall go to Union Station or else.

 

8. Please. Buy a diesel engine. Run Metro North commuter cars up and down the Amtrak line from New Haven to Hartford. This can be done tomorrow with proper scheduling and logistical support. Do it. Now. Please.

 

I hate cars. I hate car culture. If I ever move away from Connecticut, the reliance on the auto as a fact of life will be the central thing that drives me away.

 

9. Bike racks on the Plaza in front of the new and beautiful and awesome Hartford Public Library on Main Street. Bike racks in front of City Hall. Bike racks everywhere.

 

10. Speed bumps on Niles and Laurel Streets and stop signs at the corner of Niles and Laurel to make that a three-way stop. Sallie Toussaint has been organizing around this issue, Matt Ritter supports it, and I’m on the bandwagon, too.

 

While we’re at it, let’s make Niles Street one way, west to east, from Laurel to Sigourney Street. West Middle School forces the traffic pattern that way during mornings and afternoons, why not make it permanent?

 

11. For the universe to give Brenda McCumber a great gift for all the work she has done on the corner of Laurel and Niles. The residents of the Willoughby are on board, and working hard to maintain the property.

 

Brenda led the charge to secure a bench for the bus stop area on Farmington and Laurel. It is concrete, and very difficult to move.

 

The naysayers who feared that the bench would invite riffraff and problems can have no complaints; so far (knock on wood) the bench has been a success. Every time I pass by, someone new is sitting on it, enjoying it.

 

I think I might go sit on it now. Just to enjoy it.

 

A Wish List for Hartford...(top)