Day 45: Grassy Oasis

2026-03-23

Hello!

I wonder what the beaches look like in the winter.

Anyway, there's this tourist destination that thrives during the holidays, and gets little attention any other day. I visited on a maintenance day, it seems. They were taking the Christmas lights off the trees and dismantling some of their attractions to be polished or washed for next year. Electrical wires and water hoses strewn all over the place.

But the shops were still open, and some tourists were still buying things. Because the holiday theming isn't the only draw to this little village. It's also a nice place to spend your day, in general.

There's about twenty colonial-styled buildings all facing into this hilly landscape, and from inside, you can't see the car parking lot. You park on a lawn a good distance away, cross the street, and enter through some gaps in the town square. None of it is historic — the place was built for tourism in the 1960s — but it feels historic because you're not hearing cars, you're hearing people chat and laugh (if you ignore the machinery and working crew on maintenance day).

This is a style of public square that draws people in, and it's because of the (lack of) cars. By hiding those cars away, and drawing people into a colorful and shaded landscape with small shops, the village makes a ton of money from tourism as people wander around and kill time.

These shops would not survive if they had to catch the attention of passengers driving by, but they thrive on foot traffic. The buildings are too small for the car — imagine trying to fit a car through one of them.

This is starting to be used in actual places (besides tourist traps); some Main Streets and downtowns are encouraging people to park in garages on the outside of town and walk in, or at least phasing out on-street parking. Some others are rebuilding their streets entirely, narrowing the car road and giving more space to sidewalks, to encourage walkers.

But this all requires conscious decision. It requires pushing in the right direction, and addressing concerns. It requires building at the human level.

Have you seen the size of US traffic lights up close? They're 12 inches (or 30cm) in diameter. And roadside billboard signs are 10 feet by 30 feet (or 3m by 9m). Building at the human level means printing text that's smaller, lighting more detailed displays, and planting flowers instead of brighter road paint.

Humans love the human-sized world. Bring it back.

Finally, I have more than twenty articles I'd like to spotlight. From web games and others' personal projects to educational resources and books that I've started reading, I'm doing very well on and off the internet, and I've truly unlocked a healthy relationship with technology. It's not perfect, but I'm sure it's in the top 1%. Extremely happy today. One example of that is this comprehensive article on light, from a photography perspective. It's useful to get a deep understanding of optics and physics, and I think it's worth a long read.

Cheers,
David