RICHMOND — Item four of this quarter's performance review concerns Richmond, Virginia, where the municipal Urban Design Committee has approved removable bollards for the Shockoe Bottom district. Finding 4.1: the species has produced a protective post that may leave and a reviewing body that may not. The desk has audited the approval and confirms both conditions are intentional.
A removable bollard is a post that stops vehicles which have consented to be stopped. Shockoe Bottom, a low-lying riverside nightlife district, has been found consenting. The approval precedes the posts, which now join a waiting list, the local term for a queue of the queue. The desk's audit found exactly one removable object in the approved package: the post. Removability, however, is not held by the post. Under local procedure, a post leaves the ground only when the committee authorizes removal of a thing it previously approved, a step known locally as oversight. No form exists on which to request the committee's own removal; the desk checked twice and found the absence consistent both times.
"The posts come out so delivery trucks, ambulances, and festival crowds can get through," said Marlene Duckworth, the committee's vice chair for streetscape matters. "Nothing on that block is permanent. Except the review that guarantees it." "People ask whether the committee could ever be removed the way a bollard is removed," said Ray Petrosian, administrator of the city's Office of Streetscape Permanence. "We studied it. Removing the committee requires a committee. We appointed one. It has met twice, recommends further study, and has already begun studying itself. We're very proud of it."
A design committee exists to confirm that objects suit a district before the objects exist, a function adjacent to fashion, the local practice of planned aesthetic obsolescence applied to clothing. Like garments, the posts may one day be replaced when the district's look changes, a removal the committee would also have to approve. Remediation plan: none filed. A remediation of the committee would itself require committee approval, so the desk has dated its remediation memo for the day a bollard removes itself and submitted the date to the committee for approval.
Recurrence risk is structural: every future post, gate, or flood in Shockoe Bottom will require the same permanent body to approve the same temporary object. Decision of the desk: grade the process Functioning As Designed, the grade reserved for species that make the solution portable and the paperwork stationary. The bollards are removable. The committee is load-bearing.
