Monday, June 18, 2007

Returned Mail

I caught this story about cluster mailboxes on the front page of The Washington Post yesterday. It seems that the Postal Service's plan to expand the use of cluster type mailboxes in new single family home developments is meeting with some resistance from homeowners and developers.

I recall that these cluster mailboxes were one of the innovations that Rouse introduced into Columbia forty years ago which raises two questions.

What took the Postal service so long to expand this concept?

Why have people failed to embrace it?

Having grown up in Columbia I became acustomed to having my mail delivered to a neighborhood cluster box. It was no big deal and often provided many an impromtu meeting with my neighbors. In my new neighborhood in Ellicott City we have the standard mailbox in front of our house and I find that I miss my old cluster box.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Columbia mailboxes were great until the Postal Service decided it was a "federal crime" to post notices on them.

Anonymous said...

Great idea. You might actually meet your neighbors this way. And get some much-needed exercise. They should expand this to all housing complexes. It would keep costs down.

Too bad people are lazy and complainers.