Do I live on a woonerf?

This London cul-de-sac is a perfect living yard: woonerf.

After yesterday's post and the comments, I decided to rewrite and re-post the following which looked at suburban street design in London, Ontario, in particular and North American suburbia in general.

It was almost a decade ago that one of the coolest words in urban planning circles was woonerf. According to the local London paper, a woonerf was Dutch for naked street. I preferred an alternate translation: living street.

Woonerfs were streets designed, or redesigned, to force drivers to slow down as they shared the road with cyclists, pedestrians and children. There was no clear division between traffic and pedestrian rights of way in properly designed woonerfs.

Reading this gave me a crazy thought. Maybe I was living on a woonerf. Have North American suburbanites been enjoying their own form of woonerfs for years: Courts, crescents, places and culs-de-sac?

Traffic and kids share my suburban court.

Search the web today and you'll find examples of Dutch woonerfs with gardens and pedestrian seating nestled in among the shrubs and flowers.

These remind me of the court directly above mine and linked to my court by a well-used walkway. (I featured it earlier in the month.)

The first woonerf was in the City of Delft, Netherlands, back in the '60s. In the following decade, the Dutch government set design standards and passed traffic laws regulating woonerfs.

I feel some suburban courts come quite close to meeting the Dutch goals.

Curved streets keep traffic moving slowly

London, Ontario, is considering a speed limit of 40 km/h in residential areas. I find that with the curved streets in my 1980s suburb, I rarely drive faster than 40 km/h. Traffic control was one of the main reason for choosing a street layout other than the more traditional grid layout with parallel streets with numerous right-angle intersections. It seems to have worked, at least where I live in the southwest of the city.

Sand Mountain at Apple Land Station

There are more things to do at Apple Land Station than just pick apples. One of the other activities that excited my granddaughters was the sand mountain. It is said it took 500 dump truck loads of sand to build the huge mound on the grounds of the apple orchard just east of London, Ontario. Kids are encouraged to climb it, roll down it or crawl through the tunnels.

Apple Land Station

It is mid October. It is time to get the apples off the trees and into storage. Some varieties will last for six months when stored in a cool, dark, humidity-controlled room. The last apples from this fall's crop may still be good come mid April of next year.

But apples are not just good for eating. They are also good for picking. Yes, picking apples can be fun. Pick-your-own apple orchards are not as common as they once were but they do still exist. Apple Land Station attracts thousands of Londoners every fall to pick apples, explore two corn mazes, climb a sand "mountain", visit farm animals or simply shop. Fresh baked apple pies are a big seller.

Literally tens of thousands of area folk, often parents with their children, visit Apple Land Station each fall. There are approximately 17 varieties of apples available. Whether you like your apples tart, sweet or tasting of a hint of brown sugar, Apple Land Station has the variety for you.

I must confess: I'd never heard of Apple Land Station. Sunday, my grandchildren introduced me to the place, a place they had visited on school trips.

This is one of two Dream Lottery homes.

Three London, ON, health care foundations, Children's Health Foundation, St. Joseph's Health Care Foundation and London Health Sciences Foundation, will raise and share more than $36 million in net proceeds from this year's Dream Lottery.

The home pictured above is one of two homes to be won. The one above has an appraised value of $1,454,940 while the other home is $1,624,950. The homes are the top prizes in the annual lottery but they are not the only prizes. There are also cars, vacations and lots more to be won. It is no wonder the lottery is a huge support finding solid support in the community.

The cost for a chance to win a Dream Lottery prize it isn't cheap. No surprise here. The minimum fee to play demands buying 2 tickets for $50. Buying more tickets gets you more bang for the buck. 35 tickets are only, did I say only $500.

A brochure for the charity lottery is posted online.

The dream kitchen in a Dream Lottery home.

Shelah's Place: Thank you, Jenny Jones.

The playground is called Shelah's Place but it exists only because of the generosity of Jenny Jones. A London native who went on to have a successful career as a TV talk show host in the States, Jones

invited Londoners to submit ideas that would make a difference in her hometown community. Shelah Brook had the winning vision. Jones supported the project to the tune of $100,000 U.S.—$130,000 Canadian.

The brightly coloured, solidly constructed equipment was supplied by Playworld Systems of Lewisburg, PA, USA.  This is but one of a number of playground equipment suppliers used by the City of London, Ontario. This helps to make each playground throughout the city a little different from all the others.

The majority of playground injuries are a result of a fall on an unforgiving or poorly maintained surface. Shelah's Place is different. It appears to have a poured rubber surface which drains quickly after a rainfall and is durable yet soft and somewhat springy. The cushioning is appreciated when a child falls. And they do fall, even in the best designed playgrounds.

London Fire Hydrants Carry Colour-Coded Discs

According to the local newspaper, The London Free Press, the colour-coded, reflective discs hanging on all fire hydrants in London indicate how how much water a firefighter can expect when attaching a hose to the hydrant. Blue indicates the highest flow rate, 95 litres a second, and red the lowest at less than 31 litres. Green and orange marked hydrants fall in the middle.

A hydrant’s water flow depends on the available pressure, and the size and condition of the water line. While water pressure typically depends on elevation, other factors can affect the flow. Where time counts, this information helps firefighters decide what size of hose and what pump settings to use.

For more info on this, I did a blog post some years ago looking at the shape of the discs. Many believe these discs are shaped like a Maltese Cross. If you are familiar with the Maltese Cross, you will know that this can't be true. The discs are totally the wrong shape: curved and not spikey. Here is a link to my post on the Florian Cross shape used to make these discs and why it is a suitable shape.