Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Re: fences(was fencing, but it seemed like a question about, you know,*fencing*)long

[Elizabeth Stevenson (tamgoddess]

I have had the week from heck (I've had too many worse weeks to call it
hell), so I haven't had time to answer this one. This is long, so I'll
summarize for the attention-challenged: there is no substitute for parental
supervision, and fences are probably necessary anyway, because people are
nuts when they get in their cars. Nobody can watch a child every second of
the day.

-------

We had many discussions about fences early on in our life here. We have a
somewhat unique situation, in that our parking is right in the middle of our
site. We occupy most of a small city block that has an alley through the
middle of it, which must stay open for fire and police access. So we created
the parking on the alley, half of it tucked underneath houses. We have a
sidewalk that goes from one half of the property to the other. Children
naturally gravitate towards the alley, with its level playing surface good
for riding bikes, skateboards, etc. These are also things that are banned
from the narrow walkways we have in the rest of the community.

Side note- make your walkways wide enough to truly accommodate two people
walking side-by-side. We were so busy making a tiny footprint that we have
walkways where people can't walk together and bikes will run over
pedestrians.

So, of course, there is a conflict with cars. Originally, there were only
bollards placed about 6 feet apart on either side of the walkway to keep the
cars from driving right through the alley. Then one day we had a car wash,
and some moron drove right through the alley, nearly mowing down several
children and running into a neighbor's fence on the end of the alley. Such
is the state of driving in California.

That was our wake-up call. We no longer had the luxury of thinking that a
pole sticking up through the pavement would stop some idiot form killing one
of our kids. We then attached some nice wooden fences to the bollards,
making 2 short picket fences across the alley. These broke on a regular
basis, because the kids would climb them and hang on them, in spite of the
rules. So we ended up getting heavy-duty steel (or iron?) fencing that would
stand up to kids climbing on it and the garbage men throwing it around to
get to the trash enclosure.

There are gates on both fences. They don't lock. People walk through our
alley all the time, so they need to be able to swing through. We get the
children to stay behind the fence without much hassle. The rule is, you have
to get behind the fence as soon as a car pulls in the driveway. Toddlers, of
course need more supervision. I can't imagine that people would be allowed
to let their toddlers roam around unsupervised. There is no way to keep a
toddler safe without having him in eyesight, period.

Regular drills can help when you are first starting out. Make them go
through the motions several times. Small children are great at learning
repetition. Later on, peer pressure from the well-trained veteran kids will
help keep new kids in line.

We also put in speed bumps because one person in particular drove so fast.
We were unable to get the speed bumps to stay attached to the asphalt. I
would recommend putting in asphalt bumps if you go that route.

-- 
Liz Stevenson
Southside Park Cohousing
Sacramento, California
tamgoddess [at] comcast.net

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