2ft4

Walkable West Chester Challenge: the Cone Zone

2009-01-30T12:31:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about walkability for a little over a decade. These thoughts are usually philosophical, analytical. But lately they're also, occasionally, pragmatic. And this is my pragmatic thought: the collection of neighborhoods in which I live needs pedestrian access to existing retail areas within walking distance.

Our neighborhoods are rare in this area in that there are even places to walk to. Rarer still that one of these destinations is The Cone, a roadside soft-serve establishment that buzzes with activity from Spring to Fall and possesses a large and wildly loyal customer base. Sports teams, both winners and losers, end up there as the sun sets in June. Teens congregate after they clock out from their summer jobs - often to chat with the dozens of high school students The Cone employs. Parents and grandparents bring toddlers to sit outside and enjoy one of America's gifts to human culture.
A few years ago, when my uncle and aunt were visiting from the Netherlands (a densely populated and very walkable country), I thought it would be nice to take a stroll to The Cone for dessert. A little over a mile each way, the walk would be a pleasant way to spend time, and would burn some of the calories, too. Though walking down unshaded asphalt after a day of sun proved to be less than pleasant, it was the last few hundred yards that pushed the walk into the "not to be repeated" category of activities.
These last few yards are similar to the climax of Frodo's journey to unload the Ring. We were walking along a major two lane road whose posted speed limit was 40 mph. Half way along it, the road dips down, with the effect that oncoming traffic becomes aware of you only at close range. There is no sidewalk, of course. There is also no paved shoulder. Though not quite as bad as Fountains Blvd, where the white line is painted in the gravel beside the pavement, there is really no safe place to walk. A large ditch separates residences from the road, and the topography indicates that the ditches are almost always moist. We were, for the most part, walking through the yards of the houses along the way.
That's not a bad way to go, but at one point the houses stop, and we were forced onto the roadside in order to get to The Cone. That was the point at which I said to myself, "never again".

So the challenge is this: devise a safe, pedestrian route from the residences on the south west corner of Tylersville and Cincinnati-Dayton to the Cone. Everyone I've talked to agrees that this one change would improve life significantly for everyone who lives here.

Strategy meetings at my house until The Cone opens this Spring.

Review: Superbia!

2009-01-30T11:16:00.000-08:00

Superbia! by Dan Chiras and David Wann (New Society Publishers, 2003).

The premise of Superbia! is simple: though it would be nice to move to a small town where the sidewalks lead from houses to ice cream parlor, an old restored neighborhood where trees protect and shade pedestrians, or a co-housing development where neighbors share equipment, meals, and gardens, the reality is that most people live in suburbs dominated by the demands of private space and the automobile (which, if you think about it, are the same thing: the car is private space). What can be done to make the suburbs we have more livable? Co-authors David Wann and Dan Chiras teamed up with Mother Earth News to answer that very question.

Though the subtitle, "31 ways to create sustainable neighborhoods" might suggest, with its allusion to Baskin-Robbins, a smorgasbord of offerings, the authors suggest something a little more like a method than a menu. Significant structural change - the way streets are used, the creation of common space like gardens or buildings - is accomplished after a sizable pile of social capital has been amassed. In other words, people have to function as a neighborhood before the neighborhood can be changed. To that end, the reader is encouraged to gather people around common needs - food, child care, hobbies, challenges - and to communicate. Who knows what might happen when one person takes the initiative to gather neighbors, and then hold up the mirror of a newsletter long enough for those gathered to begin feeling the startling rebirth of the word "us"?

This is grass roots political action, plain and simple. Though the authors maintain a consistently upbeat and motivational tone, there are some dark realities to contend with; and the only weapon that is effective against these is the clearly stated will of the people. One of these realities is zoning laws. Our streets are the width of canyons for a reason. The same reason has placed the grocery store down the road three miles, at the intersection of two four-lane roads. Even though these codes are proving to be the destruction of social fabric, we have no other laws in place yet; to override them takes some political momentum. Another is human nature. No matter how benevolent the dictator, most people resent someone else coming in and changing things. In order to get changes made that have a hope of lasting, neighbors have to feel like they are the ones making the change. A third is individualism, that tendency of American life and policy to be tilted toward the rights of the individual. Though the safest route from houses to ice cream may be along a residential fence line, good luck getting that access without the owner's consent.
[A little aside, for those who have noted that ice cream pops up frequently here, even though I'm writing in January: see the next blog.]

In other words, it's a long, winding process with no guarantees. By showing us pictures of the way things are and the way things could be, Superbia! hopes to fuel us for the journey. Some things that I found fueling:

the underlying assumption that being involved with your neighbors is rewarding, regardless of the long term accomplishments;
the application of human scale to design - the principle, for instance, that neighborhood elements should be no farther than 450 feet apart, the maximum distance at which we recognize people;
the consistent emphasis that the way we are doing things now is difficult and/or expensive, as well as lonely; and that good neighborhood design saves time and money, and reintroduces us to other people - some of whom are very good at the things we find impossible;
the possiblity of becoming a citizen planner;
pictures of what others have done, and extensive resources for pursuing the ideas presented.

This book is a helpful reminder that citizens can still shape their worlds. It could serve as a lift-giving installment to one of their early Superbia! ideas: start a book club.

Requiem for Cottage Living

2009-01-27T17:54:00.000-08:00

This week we got a note in the mail telling us that Cottage Living would no longer be published. Though the news has been received with sadness, I can't say that I don't understand it. The magazine suffered from a couple of challenges.

It had a bit of a divided personality - on the one hand, it was a periodical dedicated to the notion that small houses are eminently livable. It celebrated the visions of the New Urbanism, a vision of dense, walkable, mixed use urban areas with a heavy dose of public space, without being a journal for professionals. It celebrated a particular architectural style, the cottage style: houses on a small scale, oriented toward the street, houses that felt both cozy and inviting, secure and approachable. In other words, it was a magazine about the way a house interacted with other houses, how it formed part of a social fabric.
It was also a decorator/rehabber's magazine: how to make over a little kitchen, how to add a second story to a 900 sq. ft. bungalow. Those articles bored me to tears. We spend far too much time indoors to begin with; articles on decorating are just part of the addiction. Adding space usually just results in room for more stuff that has to paid for with more time at work, or another person working.
But the neighborhood stuff I really got into. I have found no other magazine that would concede, let alone champion, the notion that houses are not stand alones. (Kunstler's observation in Home from Nowhere that American home design is limited to two options - the manor house on the estate, or the cabin in the woods - is played out in just about every house periodical on the stands.) Apparently now there is none to be found.

I suppose they went the way of many magazines in an internet age. The smaller ones, the ones that are less focussed, the newer ones, will fail. But the failure of this one hits me hard; as if the voice of a different way of thinking and seeing has been lost, the voice of the Resistance, and we're back to a one party system: house as retreat from the world, and filled with retreats from others in the house.
And, I suppose that advertising revenue would be hard to come by for a magazine valuing simple, small, and - gasp! - old homes, valuing the quality of life that emerges when neighborhoods function as interdependent economic units (if your house doesn't have room for a snow blower, that might prompt the un-growth notion that you could share one with a neighbor - or several), and valuing the uniqueness of places, the adaptation of homes to their surroundings, instead of a mass-market sameness.

But who will alert me, as Cottage Living did, to the existence pocket neighborhoods? About the re-emergence of neighborhoods on the Gulf Coast after Katrina? About the ten best new neighborhoods?

As I blubber at this casket, I am reminded that sometimes a death prompts an even more vigorous rebirth. Let's hope.

the meme project

2009-01-16T07:03:00.001-08:00

The web is like one enormous itching ear: people hear you talking about them.

So here I am, creating my own little online journal which nobody reads but SOMEDAY, when I'm famous, people will come to visit the cabin where it all began - essentially, writing for the discipline it gives, getting the stuff down, like putting up ripe fruit: in the winter, when you need a reminder of what summer is, there it is. A jar of pears. But the web lets Mary Soderstrom know that I've jotted some notes about her book, and she decides to include me in an ... experiment.

To be honest, I'm not sure I get the concept beyond allowing people to introduce their blogging friends to other blogging friends. In the event that it turns out that I've actually participated in some anti-government activity, let me say this here: I had no idea.

I'm doing it because one doesn't decline an invitation from royalty. Royalty being, in this case, someone whose previous book, Green City, was judged by the Toronto Globe and Mail to be one of the best books of 2007.
I'm doing it because I'm curious about what happens when parties collide: the one that's happening in my brain (though now that I think about who's actually there, it doesn't seem like a party so much as a meeting of those intent on pulling the world back from the edge of the abyss - so, yes, now I am, in a way, participating in an anti-government activity. At least the previous American government.) with the one in someone else's brain. Will love erupt? Or fisticuffs? Or discreet checking of the time?
I'm doing this because I really like the writing I've read, and think it deserves to be read more.

This is how it goes:

1. finger the one what got you into dis mess. (noted above)

2. post the rules (something akin to onomatopoeia about this)

3. write six random things about yourself.

Well, setting aside the questions I have about randomness and writing -
a. I have a lobster trap at the front door.
b. I'm married to the first woman ordained in the denomination we serve.
c. I have decided that the Green Zebra is the world's best tasting tomato. I haven't tasted them all, but I can't imagine one better.
d. I really enjoy walking. Even in bad weather.
e. I drive a school bus for now. (See? That's what I mean about randomness: how can the juxtaposition of two such statements be seen as random?)
f. I come from a long line of cheap people. My great uncle used baler twine to keep his pants up.

4. Tag six bloggers.

Paul Szydlowski - my neighbor and fellow garage band member

Valerie Taylor - moderates a herd of several hundred locavores in Cincinnati

Eric Fredericks - a nice blog on community/walkability in Sacramento

Daniel Meeter - one of my pastoral mentors

James K. A. Smith - professor of philosophy at my alma mater, and renaissance guy

Scott Cullen - just found him. Needed six. Guess that makes him goalie.

5. Tell the six that they've been tagged.

Have a look.

Review: The Walkable City - Mary Soderstrom

2009-01-11T17:31:00.000-08:00

I'd been looking forward to the publication of The Walkable City: from Haussmann's Boulevards to Jane Jacobs' Streets and Beyond since seeing it advertised last summer. While waiting for it, I read the predecessor, Green City - a study of the relationship of people and nature in highly "built" environments, focusing on a dozen or more cities around the world. So I was familiar with her style and her background.

Soderstrom is a novelist by trade and a Canadian by citizenship. And, obviously, perhaps, but not insignificantly, a woman. All three of these attributes give her a perspective that differs substantially from that of the body of people who have authorized, designed, and built the cities of the western world - Haussmann, for instance. In comparing and contrasting the design of Paris under Haussmann with the work (both in writing and in community activism) of Jane Jacobs, then, Soderstrom comes out on the side of Jacobs - a mightily influential woman who did not have a college degree (she took courses that interested her) nor a steady career in any of the fields that would qualify one as an "expert" in urban design.

Like Jacobs, Soderstrom's qualifications include a lively sensitivity to what it means to live - not only in the epitomized sense of those whose pictures populate magazines, but especially for the great majority of people who work. People who, particularly before Karl Marx, were invisible to the world of culture and politics. The pedestrian life has always been of paticular interest to those who cannot afford or are not entitled to any other form of transportation, whether horses, carriages, or trains, planes, and automobiles. It is in this respect that Soderstrom's training as a writer of fiction is crucial to her ability to write this book, because in seeking to understand what life in a pedestrian city was like, she turns to novelists - notably Victor Hugo and his depiction of life in Paris for working class people. The novel is, perhaps, the best vehicle for chronicling what the mundane in any given place is like. Not even a great painting can show us what the walk to work is like, or the walk home.

This perspective also informs the way in which Soderstrom analyses the "improvements" of cities. In neighborhoods ostensibly based on the principles of the New Urbanism (which seeks, among other things, to restore walkable scale to cities), she finds that the neighborhoods are walkable - but there's no place to walk to. Who walks nowhere but those with leisure time? Furthermore, what happens to all the people who used to live in the now improved developments?

Her book whetted my appetite for more of Jane Jacobs, and for a stroll in some of the newer experiments in Paris. It also confirmed my suspicions of many "developments", which, in order to make people famous and get politicians re-elected, are executed on such a scale that only the wealthy can afford to live, work, and start businesses there; but that lasting neighborhoods have a mix of old and new, expensive and inexpensive, businesses and homes. Finally, I found the intermittent musings on density - how many people per square mile are required to make a viable walking culture? - to be a helpful guideline for testing what sounds good but may not actually work. Outside of more technical works, such hard data can be hard to come across.

The Walkable City also contains an extensive bibliography for further reading.

the business of getting things done

2009-01-11T06:53:00.000-08:00

Now that the housing market has cooled to -40, the possibility of creating walkable community by simply building a new neighborhood along the lines of New Urbanism principles has decreased dramatically (but a future blog about the merits of that option is coming). Most of us are faced with the task of retrofitting existing neighborhoods to accommodate alternative modes of travel - bikes, feet, trains, street cars.

I've been listening in for the last few months on the meetings of a group of residents from the other side of West Chester twp attempting to do just that. Their goal is to improve life along the 3 mile stretch of State Rte. 42 that runs diagonally through the township. Also known as Cincinnati-Columbus Rd, it was the major artery between those two cities before the age of the interstate, and it runs through what the oldtimers call Pisgah - a biblical reference to its relative altitude - a village center where several major roads met. At roughly 20 miles from downtown Cincinnati, and unincorporated, the properties along this road are a visually interesting mix of old and new retail, residences, light industrial facilities, and even an occasional farm. With I71 a few miles east and I75 a few miles west, and touching three counties in those three miles, it tends to be the highway that recent development forgot. But state plans to widen the road have given local residents and business owners an opportunity to talk about making other changes - like eliminating unsightly utility lines that cross the road at numerous places, for instance. And making this former truck route accessible to people on bike or on foot.

Currently, their aim is to construct a short bike/foot path from the north end of Sharon Woods Park into the residential neighborhoods to the east of Rte. 42. This park's southern end touches the old core of Sharonville, a quaint and somewhat walkable suburban city on the south side of the I275 beltway, built around Rte. 42. The proposed connector would allow bike traffic between Sharonville and Pisgah, currently four miles by car, which includes a major interchange at the junction of the state and the interstate highways. The connector would change the bike journey from one that only an experienced driver would take, and probably then only to show that it could be done, to one that accompanied and safety-trained children could handle. At a leisurely 8 mph one could tune up a bike at West Chester Cyclery at 11:30 and have lunch at The Blue Goose at noon.

The proposal has a number of things going for it. It takes advantage of existing safe bike routes, and changes those routes from recreational loops to functional connectors. It is relatively short, but opens up big possibilities - a kind of biking Panama Canal. And yet, getting the job done involves the cooperation and assets of several parties: Hamilton County parks, West Chester township (trustees and administration), the various transportation agencies who have authority over the roads involved, and property owners. Each have their own hopes and fears, mixed in with a big dose of indifference to alternative transportation. In my short experience of this group's journey, it seems more likely that the planets will align themselves than that all the players will come to the table ready to get the job done.

My hope is that this small and relatively painless proposal will become reality, and will become a stepping stone for more projects like it - that it will result in people leaving their cars at home, or choosing to get out for fun instead of participating in virtual reality. And that other neighborhoods will see that change is possible.

In the meantime, I tip my hat to this group that persists in its efforts to change our community for the better.

Race Walking

2008-05-06T17:39:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned before that living on a walkable scale tends to bring the people in my various circles into 3D reality. By living in a smaller radius, people start filling multiple roles and cease being simply objects in my world. They are, like me, multifaceted.
I like the ability to walk around a person and see them from different angles - musician, employee, parent, person of religious convictions and questions - and I think the walking scale community is worth pursuing for this reason alone. But the reality of our society is that it is rooted in a racist past and is careening toward a deeply racist future. Adopting walking as a mode of transportation can limit the spread of racism.
By racism, I mean simply this: dividing the world into "us" and "them" on the basis of racial categories. Suburban reality is admirably arranged to promote racism. Single use zoning on a scale that requires automobile transportation predicts that most of the people we meet we will know in only one dimension. Thus if a Latino person lives near me, he will only impact me as a neighbor. If he drives in to mow my lawn, I will register his presence as a paid worker. An automotive way of life makes knowing this Latino person as a person, like me, having things in common with me as well as things that are different, unlikely. My tendency will be to view people who do not look like me as not like me. In other words, not us, but them.
It is agonizing to watch our country, with its ideals of religious freedom and history of conscious struggle toward equality for African Americans, choose a deeply xenophobic and stingy approach to legal and illegal immigrants from Latin America; and to adopt the language of religious war against people from Arab cultures. We are allowing ourselves to be reduced to our worst - by those who profit from our fears. We look at a person who could be Mexican, and we suspect they might be illegally in the U.S. We see a person who could be Arab, and are tempted to wonder what harm they are planning.
As I listen to my high school aged daughters process the racism in our culture, it seems to me that the alternative that is being presented to them (and all of us) is to rise above it. We ought not judge people by appearances, and ought to treat all people equally. This strikes me as liberal idealism (and, please understand me: there are worse labels than "liberal idealist") at its stupidest: simply educate people and they'll stop negative behavior. As I watch people age, I see them try to live by such ideals as teens and young adults, and then slip into resentful racism once they realize that jobs are scarce and billions of citizens' tax dollars are being spent each day to fight terrorism.
The only thing that fights racist ideas and assumptions is getting to know people as more, not simply other, than the color of their skin or the circumstances of their birth. That is, to see them as people. At first, people will strike us both "them" and "us". With continued interaction, however, they become simply "us". They care about their kids and the schools they attend; they're fussy about their yards in ways that I am not; they tend to smoke too much and are trying to quit. They are people: broken, hopeful, predictable, and unpredictable.
Getting to know people like this, especially people who start out as "them", takes a hugely intentional effort. Every Martin Luther King Jr. day we make promises to spend more time with people not like us. But with very few exceptions, people don't carry through on these promises. Forming a book club or a dinner club to "build bridges" is just another complication in life, no matter how noble; just another event to schedule, another plate to keep spinning.
Living on a walking scale allows me to develop natural relationships with people around me, relationships that reflect commonalities as well as supply and need. In suburban America, single use zoning will tend to insist that my neighbors inhabit the same economic bracket as I do, along with a host of other defining traits. But even here, I have found that people resist categorization - at the very least they exhibit a rich tapestry of stories that have brought them to this socially uniform place.
I walk to fight racism.

The People in Your Neighborhood

2008-05-04T15:17:00.000-07:00

I grew up watching Sesame Street, and many of its jingles pop up in my brain 40 years later. There was a bit about people in your neighborhood, particularly occupations: "they're the people that you meet when you're walking down the street". Things change, of course, for those of us who move from Sesame Street, with it's old world walk ups and corner groceries, to the American suburbs. Where I live, hardly anybody walks. And when we do, we probably don't meet anybody. In the off chance we do, it's not a person working - it's just another walker. Actually, the only part of the Sesame Street song that's still coming true is the verse about the garbage man. I think walking holds the key to moving back to Sesame Street.

What happens when we start to walk places - I mean, not just walk in exercise loops, but intentionally choose to leave the car at home and conduct our business within walking distance? It's been my experience that it changes the nature of business, of how I interact economically with other people. There was a discount department store where I grew up whose slogan was "the lowest price is the law". It occurs to me now that most of the time we live as if this is true: we will shop wherever we get the best deal. But I am learning to remind myself that price does not necessarily reflect cost. An inexpensive product from China costs some company and its employees here in lost revenue (which also costs me in increased welfare costs and decreased tax revenue), and costs the environment in shipping and whatever the Chinese government allows manufacturers to do that we no longer permit our own manufacturers to do. An inexpensive product from Walmart may cost my community a job that would have paid a bit more than Walmart does. An inexpensive hamburger from McDonalds may cost me in health bills down the road.

Simply put, there are costs associated with any product that our economic system either underestimates (and hence passes on to some one to pay later) or disregards completely. David Wann (he co-wrote Affluenza) in his book Simple Prosperity attempts to provide a more realistic picture of what things cost by listing the things he gained by choosing a simpler life style – and by simpler he means “making less money by working less”. By having less money to spend, he uncovered other values that weren’t reflected in dollars. It's up to each person to examine the true costs of any commodity or service, not just the price tag.

As the locavore movement has pointed out, one of the underestimated and hidden costs for food is fossil fuels - each calorie of food consumes nearly 90 calories in transportation and processing. So I've decided to get eggs, milk, vegetables, pork, beef, and chicken from local farmers. Some of it costs more than what the store will sell it to me for, but here are the things I get from buying food locally:

the knowledge that I'm keeping a local farmer in business and tax dollars in my community
a role in keeping land in agricultural production rather than grass, concrete, or asphalt
a role in keeping agricultural skills alive in this area for people who would like to learn them
the ability to look the producer in the eye before I put something in my body
a connection to the earth and its creatures, its cycles, its dignity
a desire to pay a price that supports the farmer and her business, not just the least I can get away with
deeper gratitude for the food I eat, as I understand the commitment required to provide it
a stronger network in my community, since these people know other people who I could know

Shortening the distance the product moves provides these benefits. Shortening the distance that I move can have similar benefits. When I walk to buy things or services, I strengthen my community, keep people working who will in turn keep me working, keep skills alive so that young people living here can learn them, develop an economic relationship that has social and moral overtones, and increase my gratitude for the things I have received because I understand the work that went into them.
While it's true that intentional driving in a restricted radius could have the same effect, walking is a more natural, healthy, and democratic way to accomplish the decision to buy locally.

walking in circles

2008-04-25T03:53:00.000-07:00

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.

driving in circles

2008-04-23T17:20:00.000-07:00

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.

Walking for dollars

2008-04-23T16:34:00.000-07:00

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.

recreational vs. functional walking

2008-04-23T14:36:00.001-07:00

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.

walking scale

2008-04-20T05:26:00.001-07:00

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.

why walk: faith

2008-04-18T16:49:00.000-07:00

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.

why walk: seniors

2008-04-18T15:59:00.000-07:00

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.

think of the children

2008-04-16T17:30:00.000-07:00

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.

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)

These are all, in themselves, horrible results.

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.

Taken together, these are a staggering indictment of the lifestyle that suburban culture has created. But I have come to the conclusion that the most distressing outcome has to do with kids' souls. Children are born with the capacity and the desire to explore. They want to know things, and their brains are marvelously suited to direct the process of acquiring knowledge. (If that weren't the case, teaching would be impossible.) Shutting kids in houses until they can be shuttled in cars to organized activities (mostly indoors) severely limits the arena of their exploration, and the activity of exploring. They can't get out in "the world" - whether that's the world of ideas by walking to the library, the world of economics by walking to the store, or the world of nature by walking to the pond.

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

2008-04-16T16:49:00.000-07:00

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?