My wife Lesli and I were teaching a class on the book Margin by Dr. Richard Swenson, who believes that health for people in North America demands a return to living within our physical, time, financial, and emotional resources. Lesli came up with a pair of diagram that captures the conclusions we've come to regarding lifestyle and community.
The first diagram is a hub with a half dozen spokes emerging from it attached to circles. The hub is me, and the circles represent your various "neighborhoods". There's the people you know who live around you, the people you know from work, the people from your kids' schools, from your faith community, from the gym, from the places you've lived before, and your extended family. If you have a hobby that gets you in another group, add that. Maybe even the email groups you belong to, if you want. There's also a loosely connected retail and service community - people you buy stuff from or hire to build, make, or fix things. It's our experience in modern suburban life that it is rare for these groups to have any shared members. Imagine a big celebration for your next birthday - you invite everyone one you know. I picture that for most suburbanites, the party hardens into pockets of people who know each other from one of your circles but know no one else.
The second diagram is the same as the first with this exception: the spokes are shorter, with the result that the attached circles overlap - there are people from your various spheres of life who fit in more than one group. People from church also happen to be your neighbors. The father of your kid's friend fixes your car. The woman who serves on the food bank board married your mother's cousin. This life exists in rural areas, small towns, and still exists in pockets of older cities. Throw a big party in this diagram and the overhead view looks like an ants nest of mingling.
There's a lot to be said for this second picture. For one, it contributes to personal integrity: it's harder for me to be a "different person" at work than at home, because there are those who both see me work and see me parent. Second, it allows me to both see others and be seen by them as more than a role. It's harder to commodify me, and I am likewise less likely to treat another simply as someone who does or gives something to me: I will more likely consider my doctor's need for rest along side of my need for her care if I know her children. Third, people in this picture emerge as we are: multifaceted. Did you know that the guy who lives next to you is a fine banjo player? In this picture, you eventually would. Fourth, it simplifies life and speeds up the resolution of challenges. If I know that my neighbor plays banjo, I do not need to thumb through the yellow pages when I have an depression that requires the irresistible joy that the banjo elicits. I knock on his door - if he can't help, he knows someone who can. Banjo players have as one of their circles other banjo players. The same is true of people who could use my help. And if there's one thing that I have grown certain of, it's that people love to be asked to help. Fifth, it builds citizenship. As the circles overlap, I begin to see concerns that impact many of the people in them. I also begin to sense passions, skills, and connections for addressing these concerns. They may not impact me directly, but I see that they impact my neighbors (not just my geographical neighbors) and therefore I understand the call for action.
Personally, I can't think of any negatives in this picture. I know some people like their privacy; but in my experience privacy is either the desire not to be hurt or the desire to do hurtful things (and the cycle of abuse suggests that these two desires are interwoven). These desires are more easily addressed in relationship than out of it.
The more pressing question is not whether everybody wants it, but why, if it's so good for us to live with overlapping social worlds, don't we have it?
It could be wealth: the love of money is the root of all evil, according to a first century writer. Money always tempts me to think I can take care of myself, when in fact the notion that I can take care of myself is the source of much suffering. As the wealthiest people in the world, and maybe of all history, suburbanites are an awfully lonely bunch.
It could be that we don't realize that the life of overlapping worlds requires, in the suburban context, an intentional scaling back. One author, in The Connecting Church, suggests living as much as possible within one square mile.
It could be that we simply get in our cars too quickly, without thinking where we're going. A walking lifestyle in a walkable community builds a life defined by overlapping, interconnected, multifaceted relationships.
So here's to the life of true wealth: knowing people as I know myself - complex, broken, hopeful, skilled, passionate; and bound to them in a web of support and resourcefulness. A walking life.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
driving in circles
Sometimes I promote walking in its own right, and sometimes I assume that if I beat up driving enough, walking will emerge as the winner. I realize that a more popular tendency is to posit a corrective for every driving evil: green cars to reduce pollution, green power to replace fossil fuels, local energy to reduce importing, bigger roads to reduce driving time.
The essential nature of the car, however, is rarely challenged. And the nature of the car is to move us huge distances daily. We want, apparently, to keep moving. We're like shopping addicts who take a lower interest rate as an opportunity to spend more. Each solution sees us driving more.
The problem of this approach, allowing each advance in automotive technology to allow us to drive more, is this: when we drive more, we create a social world that is described by a larger radius. In other words, if the new interstate system allows me to move from mile 10 from the city's core to mile 15 (the current average commute is 15 miles), I have increased my driving distance by 5 miles, or 50%. The social world described by my doing so, however, goes from a circle with a radius of 10 miles to a circle with a radius of 15 miles. The area of the social world has increased from about 300 square miles to about 675 square miles - over 100%. I'm not prepared to say what the right size for a social world is. But I think there are many people who feel relationally starved, socially ungrouped - they lack a sense of the tribe that cares for them.
There is, it seems to me, only one thing to do about the car's tendency to take us away from a sense of home: use it less. In other words, live in the world that is described by a pedestrian or bicycle scale.
The essential nature of the car, however, is rarely challenged. And the nature of the car is to move us huge distances daily. We want, apparently, to keep moving. We're like shopping addicts who take a lower interest rate as an opportunity to spend more. Each solution sees us driving more.
The problem of this approach, allowing each advance in automotive technology to allow us to drive more, is this: when we drive more, we create a social world that is described by a larger radius. In other words, if the new interstate system allows me to move from mile 10 from the city's core to mile 15 (the current average commute is 15 miles), I have increased my driving distance by 5 miles, or 50%. The social world described by my doing so, however, goes from a circle with a radius of 10 miles to a circle with a radius of 15 miles. The area of the social world has increased from about 300 square miles to about 675 square miles - over 100%. I'm not prepared to say what the right size for a social world is. But I think there are many people who feel relationally starved, socially ungrouped - they lack a sense of the tribe that cares for them.
There is, it seems to me, only one thing to do about the car's tendency to take us away from a sense of home: use it less. In other words, live in the world that is described by a pedestrian or bicycle scale.
Walking for dollars
Gas hit $3.60 a gallon in my neck of the woods this week. I keep thinking I'll see the pedestrian revolution: people leaving their cars at home, taking the bus, walking to the store. Perhaps we are the legendary frog in the kettle who never realizes that the temperature of the water he's in is rising - until he's cooked. Would we jump out of our car kettles if the price soared from the 77 cents I paid around 10 years ago to its current price?
Maybe nobody has crunched the numbers for us, so here, briefly, is how the cost of driving looks to me. Currently, our family vehicles get around 20 mpg, so 20 miles costs $3.60 or 18 cents per mile. If I'm lucky, these cars we bought used will generate 100,000 miles each for their average purchase price of $11,000 (including interest). That yields an ownership cost of 11 cents per mile. Insurance on such old cars isn't much, and doesn't change regardless of how many miles we drive, but it isn't completely unrelated: if we drive less, the cars last longer and our insurance premiums drop. So I factor in 24,000 miles per year divided by $720 per year, and get 3 cents per mile. Older cars are racking up "used car payments" at the shop, so I figure maintenance and repairs at $1440 per year over the same miles and add another 6 cents per mile. I'm up to 38 cents per mile.
Your results, as they say, will differ. You may surmise that I am "frugal", and you would be wrong. I am cheap. Had I bought a new car, the ownership and insurance costs would have easily pushed the total over the federal mileage allowance of 48.5 cents per mile.
These are the direct costs to me, and I would argue that, if I drive when I could walk, the costs are even higher: short trips burn more fuel and are harder on engines than long ones. There are other costs which are real, but it's hard to say who is going to be asked to foot (forgive the pun) the bill: the costs you will pay down the road (forgive the pun) for your health care because you chose not to walk or bike; the costs (and who knows when these will come due) to clean the environment; the costs to pay for police, and insurance claims, in neighborhoods where no one is moving slow enough to notice the difference between normal and abnormal activity; the infrastructure costs of building and maintaining roads. There is also a growing body of research that suggests that not knowing your neighbors comes with a steep price in emotional health - which in turn affects my health, productivity and conduct in society. And you might also be saving the cost of your health club membership. Finally, since fuel is largely imported, driving increases our trade imbalance and generates more debt.
When I have the choice to walk, walking saves me and all of us money.
Maybe nobody has crunched the numbers for us, so here, briefly, is how the cost of driving looks to me. Currently, our family vehicles get around 20 mpg, so 20 miles costs $3.60 or 18 cents per mile. If I'm lucky, these cars we bought used will generate 100,000 miles each for their average purchase price of $11,000 (including interest). That yields an ownership cost of 11 cents per mile. Insurance on such old cars isn't much, and doesn't change regardless of how many miles we drive, but it isn't completely unrelated: if we drive less, the cars last longer and our insurance premiums drop. So I factor in 24,000 miles per year divided by $720 per year, and get 3 cents per mile. Older cars are racking up "used car payments" at the shop, so I figure maintenance and repairs at $1440 per year over the same miles and add another 6 cents per mile. I'm up to 38 cents per mile.
Your results, as they say, will differ. You may surmise that I am "frugal", and you would be wrong. I am cheap. Had I bought a new car, the ownership and insurance costs would have easily pushed the total over the federal mileage allowance of 48.5 cents per mile.
These are the direct costs to me, and I would argue that, if I drive when I could walk, the costs are even higher: short trips burn more fuel and are harder on engines than long ones. There are other costs which are real, but it's hard to say who is going to be asked to foot (forgive the pun) the bill: the costs you will pay down the road (forgive the pun) for your health care because you chose not to walk or bike; the costs (and who knows when these will come due) to clean the environment; the costs to pay for police, and insurance claims, in neighborhoods where no one is moving slow enough to notice the difference between normal and abnormal activity; the infrastructure costs of building and maintaining roads. There is also a growing body of research that suggests that not knowing your neighbors comes with a steep price in emotional health - which in turn affects my health, productivity and conduct in society. And you might also be saving the cost of your health club membership. Finally, since fuel is largely imported, driving increases our trade imbalance and generates more debt.
When I have the choice to walk, walking saves me and all of us money.
recreational vs. functional walking
I got my first strong taste of the difference between real life and ideal life when we bought our first house eight years ago. The master bathroom featured a "spa tub" - a deep, elliptical tub with water jets - and I envisioned myself neck deep in warm relaxation at the end of a long day. I think we used it twice, probably both times during the first winter: we found it took an awfully long time to fill, cost a small fortune in hot water, and, quite frankly, we just didn't have the time to be lying around in the tub, no matter what its jets were doing to us.
The experience has become a handy metaphor for how people are lured into paying for things that will never get used. Like a gym membership or a fondue set. (For those of you who are familiar with the church world, "small group ministry" also fits under this heading: people join churches in the hopes of making deep friendships around significant activities like studying the Bible or serving others. Then they realize that their lives are over committed, they can't make all the meetings, and never see these folks more than once a month. Their small group becomes one more set of shallow relationships which they go to out of guilt for a while and then drift out of. This is my field of reference, and I'll talk about it more when I talk about the social aspects of a walkable community.)
Sidewalks in new neighborhoods are the external counterpart to jacuzzi tubs. You picture yourself taking walks with your kids, your dog, your friends. You really enjoy walking, and you need to get some pounds off. It fits the "green" lifestyle you read about in magazines. When you get settled, however, you realize you don't have the time for a casual stroll. Besides, it's lonely; nobody else's schedule seems to match yours, so you walk by yourself with your ipod a few times. But the lack of trees makes you feel exposed to the traffic, and you feel like everybody's looking at you. You go a few times, and then peter out.
So I suggest that urban planners, zoning directors, developers, and home buyers take this approach: enable people to get to places they need to go. Assume that people do not have an extra hour in the week, let alone the day, to walk a loop. Instead, imagine them making a decision about how to do their errands: will they have a choice about whether to walk, bike, drive, or be driven? In my neighborhood, I can walk to get an ice cream cone, a haircut, a mexican meal, or pizza. I can also walk to Walmart and a pet supply store. With a little planning, I can make time to walk to these places, since I get exercise, save the planet, save money, and complete my errand at the same time. When exercise is the only benefit to walking, I find it rarely makes it into my actual day. It remains an ideal, gathering dust like my tub.
Sidewalks in new neighborhoods are the external counterpart to jacuzzi tubs. You picture yourself taking walks with your kids, your dog, your friends. You really enjoy walking, and you need to get some pounds off. It fits the "green" lifestyle you read about in magazines. When you get settled, however, you realize you don't have the time for a casual stroll. Besides, it's lonely; nobody else's schedule seems to match yours, so you walk by yourself with your ipod a few times. But the lack of trees makes you feel exposed to the traffic, and you feel like everybody's looking at you. You go a few times, and then peter out.
So I suggest that urban planners, zoning directors, developers, and home buyers take this approach: enable people to get to places they need to go. Assume that people do not have an extra hour in the week, let alone the day, to walk a loop. Instead, imagine them making a decision about how to do their errands: will they have a choice about whether to walk, bike, drive, or be driven? In my neighborhood, I can walk to get an ice cream cone, a haircut, a mexican meal, or pizza. I can also walk to Walmart and a pet supply store. With a little planning, I can make time to walk to these places, since I get exercise, save the planet, save money, and complete my errand at the same time. When exercise is the only benefit to walking, I find it rarely makes it into my actual day. It remains an ideal, gathering dust like my tub.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
walking scale
There are all kinds of good reasons for adopting a walking life style and pursue walkable community. I'll be discussing as many of them as I can in these blogs - personal and ecological health, frugality, crime prevention, and so on. But some aspects of walking make it not just good, but urgent.
One is the life of non-drivers in an automobile culture. Another is scale.
Having owned a 2500 sq.ft. house on a 15000 sq.ft. lot for the past 8 years, I am convinced that this is more room than any four people need, and more yard than any one otherwise employed laborer can manage without the help of chemicals (stimulants and depressants) and motors. James Kunstler suggests that two myths shape the location of houses on lots in America, the big house on the plantation, and the little house in the woods. Both of these models do explain why we are offered such unmanageable designs.
But as I've spent more time walking, I wonder if the reason that we do not demand other options is that, from a car, these lots and houses look right sized. At 30 mph, these estates claim our attention for a couple of seconds: nice door color, interesting roof lines, pleasant sun room addition. Only when we're walking do they seem too big to manage. It takes me half a minute to walk past a house, and there really isn't that much interesting about it: a lot of grass, a lot of brick, a couple of trees, maybe a light post. It bores me on the first pass, unlike walking in my grandparents' Holland where 50 walks into town do not exhaust the details of architecture and gardening to take in. Curves that on a suburban street add interest to a drive and a changing line of sight seem, on a walk, to have no shape at all and offer little change from the monotony of grass. I reach the edge of the parking lot of the local walmart but still have a 5 minute walk across asphalt without shade.
Classical and Biblical writers are united in the opinion that humans, made in God's image, are the measure of all things. Whenever we start measuring things by some other scale, we diminish ourselves. And the diminishing of people is the source of all kinds of evil. So measuring our lives by a car scale endangers our dignity.
The scale on which we live, the perspective from which we gaze, really matters. Walking in the postwar suburbs impresses on me that these places are bigger than life, telling me that the life I actually live, the life of my body, is somehow too small.
I've learned a few tricks to restore a human perspective to suburban life. First, I walk. Second, I imagine people where I see none. If an architect's drawing for a new development, whether residential, retail, or commercial, lacks drawings of people, I imagine them: where would they go? And would they look puny? Third, I read Cottage Living - one of the only "house beautiful" magazines that espouses an older vision for residential life: small houses, an awareness of public space, walkable scale and capacity, and the relation of a house to its neighborhood. Finally, I pray. Every dehumanizing ideology that has ever risen has had it's clay feet revealed by people who claim their dignity in the face of their creator.
One is the life of non-drivers in an automobile culture. Another is scale.
Having owned a 2500 sq.ft. house on a 15000 sq.ft. lot for the past 8 years, I am convinced that this is more room than any four people need, and more yard than any one otherwise employed laborer can manage without the help of chemicals (stimulants and depressants) and motors. James Kunstler suggests that two myths shape the location of houses on lots in America, the big house on the plantation, and the little house in the woods. Both of these models do explain why we are offered such unmanageable designs.
But as I've spent more time walking, I wonder if the reason that we do not demand other options is that, from a car, these lots and houses look right sized. At 30 mph, these estates claim our attention for a couple of seconds: nice door color, interesting roof lines, pleasant sun room addition. Only when we're walking do they seem too big to manage. It takes me half a minute to walk past a house, and there really isn't that much interesting about it: a lot of grass, a lot of brick, a couple of trees, maybe a light post. It bores me on the first pass, unlike walking in my grandparents' Holland where 50 walks into town do not exhaust the details of architecture and gardening to take in. Curves that on a suburban street add interest to a drive and a changing line of sight seem, on a walk, to have no shape at all and offer little change from the monotony of grass. I reach the edge of the parking lot of the local walmart but still have a 5 minute walk across asphalt without shade.
Classical and Biblical writers are united in the opinion that humans, made in God's image, are the measure of all things. Whenever we start measuring things by some other scale, we diminish ourselves. And the diminishing of people is the source of all kinds of evil. So measuring our lives by a car scale endangers our dignity.
The scale on which we live, the perspective from which we gaze, really matters. Walking in the postwar suburbs impresses on me that these places are bigger than life, telling me that the life I actually live, the life of my body, is somehow too small.
I've learned a few tricks to restore a human perspective to suburban life. First, I walk. Second, I imagine people where I see none. If an architect's drawing for a new development, whether residential, retail, or commercial, lacks drawings of people, I imagine them: where would they go? And would they look puny? Third, I read Cottage Living - one of the only "house beautiful" magazines that espouses an older vision for residential life: small houses, an awareness of public space, walkable scale and capacity, and the relation of a house to its neighborhood. Finally, I pray. Every dehumanizing ideology that has ever risen has had it's clay feet revealed by people who claim their dignity in the face of their creator.
Friday, April 18, 2008
why walk: faith
I am a pastor by training. I've led congregations in the Christian Reformed Church, a denomination that includes elements of thoughtful cultural engagement (see Calvin College) as well as outgoing evangelical zeal. Because of the latter some in our denomination have adopted the practice of placing the ancient Christian symbol of the fish on our cars.
I've wondered about whether my reluctance to put a fish on my car indicates an unwillingness to be identified with Jesus or other Christians. I've come to the conclusion that it's not because of my unwillingness to be linked with Jesus, but rather because of my reticence to identify my car with Jesus. That may seem to you to go without saying. I would argue, however, that cars affect the ways in which people relate that most of us would be reluctant to connect with the meaning of Christian faith.
Communication, for instance, is truncated; we neither speak and hear, nor see faces and hands (our most expressive body parts, and therefore the parts we allow to be naked). Thus when we communicate in cars, it is woodenly, as if returning from the dentist: honks, blinks. Given this inability to communicate with nuance, it is no wonder that we feel frustration while we drive, why we go quickly to anger, overt or contained.
I cannot understand why any Christian would want to have their relationship with Jesus and his followers associated with such a limited, clumsy mode of relating, one that so quickly becomes negative. To place one's faith on one's automotive shell is at very least non-relational; at worst, similar to putting a cross on one's shield. (Perhaps the intent is, in fact, not to initiate communication, but to end it. A sign of aggression that creates distance rather than the extended hand that invites intimacy.)
That's how I resolved the fish issue. But it left a lasting impression: human community is not fostered by people in cars. And, given the tension that is mounting around differences of faith, human community is not benefitted by declarations of faith that are placed on cars. I want you to know me face to face, to see my faith in the context of a relationship that is warm and inviting. When we share a walk, such relating is possible.
I've wondered about whether my reluctance to put a fish on my car indicates an unwillingness to be identified with Jesus or other Christians. I've come to the conclusion that it's not because of my unwillingness to be linked with Jesus, but rather because of my reticence to identify my car with Jesus. That may seem to you to go without saying. I would argue, however, that cars affect the ways in which people relate that most of us would be reluctant to connect with the meaning of Christian faith.
Communication, for instance, is truncated; we neither speak and hear, nor see faces and hands (our most expressive body parts, and therefore the parts we allow to be naked). Thus when we communicate in cars, it is woodenly, as if returning from the dentist: honks, blinks. Given this inability to communicate with nuance, it is no wonder that we feel frustration while we drive, why we go quickly to anger, overt or contained.
I cannot understand why any Christian would want to have their relationship with Jesus and his followers associated with such a limited, clumsy mode of relating, one that so quickly becomes negative. To place one's faith on one's automotive shell is at very least non-relational; at worst, similar to putting a cross on one's shield. (Perhaps the intent is, in fact, not to initiate communication, but to end it. A sign of aggression that creates distance rather than the extended hand that invites intimacy.)
That's how I resolved the fish issue. But it left a lasting impression: human community is not fostered by people in cars. And, given the tension that is mounting around differences of faith, human community is not benefitted by declarations of faith that are placed on cars. I want you to know me face to face, to see my faith in the context of a relationship that is warm and inviting. When we share a walk, such relating is possible.
why walk: seniors
The reasons that I believe in walking fall generally into two categories. First, it's good for me. Second, it's good for all of us. The one I've chosen to start with actually spans both, which only goes to show that most categories have blurry edges.
Walking is the most democratic and universal mode of transportation. The vast majority of people from about 1 to about 100 can do it. And since the range of speed from the slowest to the fastest varies by a factor of about 3, from a toddler's or arthritic senior's 1.5 mph to my brisk 4 mph, it is possible for the fast and the slow to adapt to each other.
In other words, urban spaces designed around walking offer almost everyone the chance to get around. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the automobile excludes most people in most western countries until they reach 16 or 18. It also excludes people at the other end of life. Here there is no fixed number: every family or government official looks at the capacities of the seniors in their care and makes a decision about when to take the car keys away. Independent living is often not only a matter of whether a person can cook, clean, and remember to pay the bills (and be happy caring for themselves) but whether the person can navigate a car. Automotive design of residential areas results in people not being able to remain in their homes simply because they can no longer drive.
It seems to me that the house should have primacy over the car. I need to have a safe place to stay more than I need to get places. There should be other ways to do the minor things (getting out) so that the major things (staying home) can be done well. A simple analogy: my ability to write checks is limited not by the checks in my checkbook, but by the money in my account. Creating a culture of encouraging people to leave their homes because they cannot drive is like saying that they should stop paying bills because they have no checks. Only if we've created a system where there's only one way to pay bills (or get places) does having checks (or driving a car) become an issue.
Furthermore, it seems not only good for seniors (and I will eventually be one) to be given places to live where they can be independent as long as they are able to walk, but it seems good for me that they have this freedom. Our neighborhoods do not benefit from two generational demographics; it's good for us to have grandparents around - ours if possible, but surrogates have served admirably. It's good for neighborhoods to have retired people around during the day, and it's good for seniors to have watchful adults around at night. It's good for a culture to have a sense of history - to have people around to remember how things are done, or how they used to be. And it's always good for humanity to be humbled by the presence of less "productive" human beings - lest we begin to think, as we often have, that those who don't fit, produce, or belong are disposable.
Creating a walkable world benefits the elderly who cannot drive, and, I believe, benefits the rest of us by their presence. It also, I must confess, reduces their burden. You may gasp at this, but it is, in my experience, what many people dread most: being a burden. If they can't drive, and driving is the only way to get around, then someone has to drive them. That someone would be a driver. But in a walkable community, that driver is free (and the funds required, perhaps, to pay her) for something else.
A final note: what about the people who can't walk, either their whole lives or a significant chunk of it? It seems to me that a walkable community is far kinder to them than an automotive one. Because so many of us walk, and have for generations, we have learned to adapt for the lame.
A culture is only as great as its protection of the weak. Recreating walkable communities, thus empowering the elderly and children, would be a step toward greatness.
Walking is the most democratic and universal mode of transportation. The vast majority of people from about 1 to about 100 can do it. And since the range of speed from the slowest to the fastest varies by a factor of about 3, from a toddler's or arthritic senior's 1.5 mph to my brisk 4 mph, it is possible for the fast and the slow to adapt to each other.
In other words, urban spaces designed around walking offer almost everyone the chance to get around. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the automobile excludes most people in most western countries until they reach 16 or 18. It also excludes people at the other end of life. Here there is no fixed number: every family or government official looks at the capacities of the seniors in their care and makes a decision about when to take the car keys away. Independent living is often not only a matter of whether a person can cook, clean, and remember to pay the bills (and be happy caring for themselves) but whether the person can navigate a car. Automotive design of residential areas results in people not being able to remain in their homes simply because they can no longer drive.
It seems to me that the house should have primacy over the car. I need to have a safe place to stay more than I need to get places. There should be other ways to do the minor things (getting out) so that the major things (staying home) can be done well. A simple analogy: my ability to write checks is limited not by the checks in my checkbook, but by the money in my account. Creating a culture of encouraging people to leave their homes because they cannot drive is like saying that they should stop paying bills because they have no checks. Only if we've created a system where there's only one way to pay bills (or get places) does having checks (or driving a car) become an issue.
Furthermore, it seems not only good for seniors (and I will eventually be one) to be given places to live where they can be independent as long as they are able to walk, but it seems good for me that they have this freedom. Our neighborhoods do not benefit from two generational demographics; it's good for us to have grandparents around - ours if possible, but surrogates have served admirably. It's good for neighborhoods to have retired people around during the day, and it's good for seniors to have watchful adults around at night. It's good for a culture to have a sense of history - to have people around to remember how things are done, or how they used to be. And it's always good for humanity to be humbled by the presence of less "productive" human beings - lest we begin to think, as we often have, that those who don't fit, produce, or belong are disposable.
Creating a walkable world benefits the elderly who cannot drive, and, I believe, benefits the rest of us by their presence. It also, I must confess, reduces their burden. You may gasp at this, but it is, in my experience, what many people dread most: being a burden. If they can't drive, and driving is the only way to get around, then someone has to drive them. That someone would be a driver. But in a walkable community, that driver is free (and the funds required, perhaps, to pay her) for something else.
A final note: what about the people who can't walk, either their whole lives or a significant chunk of it? It seems to me that a walkable community is far kinder to them than an automotive one. Because so many of us walk, and have for generations, we have learned to adapt for the lame.
A culture is only as great as its protection of the weak. Recreating walkable communities, thus empowering the elderly and children, would be a step toward greatness.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
think of the children
One of the outcomes of the automobile culture is that it imprisons children. If no one is expected or enabled to get anywhere except by car, then those who can't drive can't get anywhere - unless they have someone to drive them. So in every state, there exist plates bearing some version of "mom's taxi". Children rely on being driven places in order to get out of the house.
There are a number of results of this reality.
Now, if you're a parent, you might be protesting that you give your children ample opportunity to learn: scouts, sports, academic enrichment. And that your school is rated best in the city/state. But here's the thing: an essential ingredient in the exploration of the world is freedom - the ability to direct one's own course of study, to choose. In all the things we do to enrich our children, we consistently rob them of their freedom to follow their heart, their gut, their inquisitiveness.
Sadly ironic that in a country that teaches its children its own creation story at almost every grade level, the story of the idea of freedom, its children know very little about the freedom they are being taught. So they sit inside and surf the net.
There are a number of results of this reality.
- parents' lives (that is, the time when they are parenting) consist primarily of shuttling kids to activities
- life for children and their families is intensely scheduled
- the minivan rules the suburban auto market
- many midweek meals are eaten in the car (from places that put food through a window)
- Parenting in the history of our species has almost always been a matter of teaching children how to live, from the hands, the head, and the heart. Children learn by imitating their parents.
- The overly scheduled life is not worth living. People need down time, spontaneity, time when it doesn't matter what time it is.
- how many the vehicle seats doesn't change the fact that it almost always only has one person in it. They are more expensive to buy and to run than the vehicles they replaced.
- forget the nutritional wasteland of fast food - Michael Pollan ko'd that one. Every religion recognizes the meal as the height of human interaction, the depth of meaning.
Now, if you're a parent, you might be protesting that you give your children ample opportunity to learn: scouts, sports, academic enrichment. And that your school is rated best in the city/state. But here's the thing: an essential ingredient in the exploration of the world is freedom - the ability to direct one's own course of study, to choose. In all the things we do to enrich our children, we consistently rob them of their freedom to follow their heart, their gut, their inquisitiveness.
Sadly ironic that in a country that teaches its children its own creation story at almost every grade level, the story of the idea of freedom, its children know very little about the freedom they are being taught. So they sit inside and surf the net.
intro
A dozen years ago I was a pastor in suburban Detroit, wondering why the community that people expect from a church (think of Cheers without alcohol) was proving so hard to create. Then a friend lent me Home from Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler (kunstler.com), and my eyes were opened: almost all residential areas designed since WWII were built around the needs of the automobile. It was assumed no one would ever walk anywhere again.
Fast forward from 1950 to the present, and the prophecy is self-fulfilled. It is almost impossible to walk in most neighborhoods; and even where walking is possible, there is really no where to walk to (if you'd like to see how your place measures against this assertion, see walkscore.com ). Single use zoning built around the assumption that people will drive to every destination means that the only walkers visible in modern neighborhoods are recreational ones - people walking for the sake of walking. And, in my neck of the woods, anyway, there are very few of those.
This blog is dedicated to the recovery of walking as a primary mode of transportation. The title is a short form of a question: what are our two feet for?
Fast forward from 1950 to the present, and the prophecy is self-fulfilled. It is almost impossible to walk in most neighborhoods; and even where walking is possible, there is really no where to walk to (if you'd like to see how your place measures against this assertion, see walkscore.com ). Single use zoning built around the assumption that people will drive to every destination means that the only walkers visible in modern neighborhoods are recreational ones - people walking for the sake of walking. And, in my neck of the woods, anyway, there are very few of those.
This blog is dedicated to the recovery of walking as a primary mode of transportation. The title is a short form of a question: what are our two feet for?
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