My neighborhood’s community newsletter was looking for some new content so I submitted a little visioning exercise of the future of Madison’s city streets. I took a few street view images, used Google’s Magic Eraser to remove the cars, and then drew trees, buses, bikes, bike lanes and other modifications to the street. Finally, I rendered new images through an AI text-to-image generator using my drawings as seed images. Here you can see the before and after:

A google street view of a 2 lane one-way road with many cars and many parked cars. Very little shade. A street level view of a fictitiousrendering of a street, with a bus, on a one-lane road, a separated bike path, a bikeshare rack, lots of shade trees and people walking around

As part of the creation, I also wrote a little story set in the future to go along with it.

Somewhere On A Porch In Tenney-Lapham In The Year 2049

By Will Stedden, Area Rep

Alright, gather round folks. Here’s a little trip down memory lane. See that young person riding their bike down the street over there? Well, that wasn’t always so easy in this neighborhood. Back when I first moved here, the streets were lined with cars, traffic was a constant worry as our kids darted across the highways that ran right through our neighborhoods. Not to mention, we were all breathing in fumes and tire particles–and you wouldn’t even believe the noises cars made back then.

But today, as I sit on my porch, gaze out onto the green space that surrounds me, and take a deep breath, it’s hard to believe that this is the same neighborhood I once knew. Our streets didn’t start to look like this overnight. No, the transformation of Tenney-Lapham was a gradual process. Removing on-street parking and narrowing the roads was met with skepticism at first. Many residents, myself included, wondered how we’d ever get around town. But as the years went by, it became clear that the benefits outweighed the inconvenience. Slowly, 2 car households dropped to 1 car, and 1 car households went car free. Our cycling and transit infrastructure improved to compensate, and it seemed like everybody got one of those adorable little cargo bikes to take the littles to school in. And for the trips that still needed a car, we borrowed from the neighborhood carshare, where one shared car could do the work of 10 private cars.

I can remember the conversations that used to go around in circles for hours as everybody tried to figure out how we could squeeze in a few trees here and there, or how we could make our streets safer for walking and biking, or even how we could make our neighborhood feel spacious in light of all the development going up around us. But once we realized how much of our neighborhood was actually taken up by cars, it became obvious. With the streets cleared, and parking lots turned to parks, space was reclaimed for greenery and socializing. What was once barren asphalt could come to life.

The canopy trees that were planted decades ago grew up into the majestic giants you can see today. Our neighborhood was always pretty “cool” (as they used to say back in my day). And thanks to their shade, our neighborhood has stayed cool even as the summers have gotten hotter and hotter. As we worked together to create a more sustainable neighborhood, we forged bonds that have lasted as well.

Of course, there were challenges along the way. Change is never easy, and some folks resisted the transformation of our neighborhood. But in the end, a lot of great things got done. Looking back, I’ve gotta say, I feel a sense of pride in what we accomplished here. Anyway, enough of my history lesson, let’s go take a walk through East Washington Park.