The Crisis in American Walking
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The Crisis in American Walking
1–10 of 137 posts
Re: The Crisis in American Walking
#2Trying not to start a controversy or hijack this to an unrelated news story - but my first thought when the whole Trayvon Martin thing happened - the thing that alerts Neighborhood Watch types in bedroom communities isn't "walking while black," but just plain old "walking." It's suspicious.
Re: The Crisis in American Walking
#3This is part of the reason my wife and I are moving closer to the city. I've been stuck in the suburbs my whole life and you have to drive literally everywhere. The thought of being able to stroll over to the local market is very appealing to me.
Re: The Crisis in American Walking
#4I live close to the downtown core of my city and my daily commute is a 6 km (3.7 mile) round trip by foot. People seem to think this is exotic if not downright subversive, whereas they think nothing about sitting in a car for an hour a day and stopping off at the gym for a workout.
Note that I'm not in particularly good shape and a walk of this magnitude is not at all difficult. I arrive at work every day refreshed, alert and in a good mood, and I arrive home after work feeling the same way.
You couldn't pay me enough to take a job at which I was forced to drive, though I wouldn't mind cycling to work if the distance was too long to walk in a reasonable time.
Re: The Crisis in American Walking
#5wow. I have been walking since my childhood living in two different cities (Taipei and NYC). I really enjoy walking hours just to look at streets and scenes in different hours of days. I feel that I can perceive the environment while walking in much higher resolutions and bandwidth of information flowing into my brain than driving.
I was interviewed once in Mountain View in 2006 and I remembered walking on El Camino Real rd between Palo Alto and Sunnyvale on 100F July. I was the only one walking on the road and it is pain in ass to cross road since the traffic system is designed for cars. But I still remember vividly the scenes along El Camino Real between Palo Alto to Sunnyvale until now, even just one day in my life.
Re: The Crisis in American Walking
#6Trying not to start a controversy or hijack this to an unrelated news story - but my first thought when the whole Trayvon Martin thing happened - the thing that alerts Neighborhood Watch types in bedroom communities isn't "walking while black," but just plain old "walking." It's suspicious.
Great point. The whole notion of the "gated community" is patently offensive and only possible by virtue of the automobile.
Walk through an old city. Even in the victorian era, where families were packed in single rooms with no running water, they were just a 5-10 minute walk from stately townhouses of the well-to-do.
Now, we feel the need to separate ourselves with berms and fences.
Re: The Crisis in American Walking
#7Trying not to start a controversy or hijack this to an unrelated news story - but my first thought when the whole Trayvon Martin thing happened - the thing that alerts Neighborhood Watch types in bedroom communities isn't "walking while black," but just plain old "walking." It's suspicious.
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Re: The Crisis in American Walking
#8I live close to the downtown core of my city and my daily commute is a 6 km (3.7 mile) round trip by foot. People seem to think this is exotic if not downright subversive, whereas they think nothing about sitting in a car for an hour a day and stopping off at the gym for a workout. Note that I'm not in particularly good shape and a walk of this magnitude is not at all difficult. I arrive at work every day refreshed,…
I started doing the same thing last year, at least when the weather is pleasant. It's an amazingly liberating experience.
It makes you look forward to spring. I live in a place that typically has bad winters, so the prospect of breaking my neck on ice is not very appealing!
Re: The Crisis in American Walking
#9I live close to the downtown core of my city and my daily commute is a 6 km (3.7 mile) round trip by foot. People seem to think this is exotic if not downright subversive, whereas they think nothing about sitting in a car for an hour a day and stopping off at the gym for a workout. Note that I'm not in particularly good shape and a walk of this magnitude is not at all difficult. I arrive at work every day refreshed,…
Keep in mind that the number of U.S. cities where you would want to live within a couple of miles of downtown can be counted on with 1 hand.
Re: The Crisis in American Walking
#10In NYC, I think nothing of a 30min to 1-hour walk to get to dinner. In my hometown, where there are sidewalks connecting my house to the "downtown", I can barely walk 3 blocks without feeling weird. It's not just the practical distance, or how "safe" it is to conduct the walk... it's the strangeness of walking through something not as dense as NYC.
I've done far less formal exercise these days than I ever have at any point in my life, yet I'm still about the same weight. I owe it all to walking, including the four-story walkup.