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.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Review: Superbia!
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 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.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Requiem for Cottage Living
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.
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.
Friday, January 16, 2009
the meme project
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.
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.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Review: The Walkable City - Mary Soderstrom
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.
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
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.
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.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Race Walking
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.
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.
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