I read a biography of Paul Dirac recently and it seemed like he did a lot of his thinking about physics while walking. I checked and am impressed to see that the BBC has actually already included this obscure fact in their article!
The slow death of purposeless walking
131–140 of 188 posts
Re: The slow death of purposeless walking
#132Very few people, particularly in cities, are obliged to do much of it at all. Cars, bicycles, buses, trams, and trains all beckon. I think they got it backwards. It's suburbia that let's you use your car door to door. I haven't done the study, but based on my observations walking is one of the favorite activities of inhabitants of my city. In fact people come from far away just to spend the day walking around. Some i…
In the city where I live (Portland), most people take buses or the light rail when they can't bike due to the rain. In the summer, there's a lot of walking. I've noticed less of it in the suburbs, but there's quite a lot of it in rural Oregon. Simple, cheap fun. The Buddhists, whom Schopenhauer appreciated and modeled quite a bit of his metaphysical and psychological thinking on, also enjoyed walking a fair bit. The…
Portland isn't really dense urban, though, its has some nice neighborhoods, but you're best off bicycling between them through long stretches of residential houses with big yards.
Re: The slow death of purposeless walking
#133Good article.
This bugged me, though:
> The way people in the West have started to look down on walking is detectable in the language. "When people say something is pedestrian they mean flat, limited in scope," says Solnit.
...Seeing as how "pedestrian" comes from Latin pedester, which had the same two meanings ("on foot" or "dull and ordinary"). The Romans contrasted it with the more exciting equester ("on horseback").
Re: The slow death of purposeless walking
#134Very few people, particularly in cities, are obliged to do much of it at all. Cars, bicycles, buses, trams, and trains all beckon. I think they got it backwards. It's suburbia that let's you use your car door to door. I haven't done the study, but based on my observations walking is one of the favorite activities of inhabitants of my city. In fact people come from far away just to spend the day walking around. Some i…
I think this is an overly broad generalization. People in suburbia walk all the time. For exercise. For fun. Sometimes just to walk the dog. They may not be walking with a purpose, but isn't that the point of the article?
Re: The slow death of purposeless walking
#135Was living in NYC and absolutely loved being able to walk everywhere and not own a car. The last few months I've been in US suburbia though (Texas/Utah) and it seems actively hostile towards walkers in many places.
Sometimes there's sidewalks, but often they're not continuous and just end for no apparent reason. You then have to walk in the road next to the cars for a ways and hope the sidewalk starts up again.
Even if there are sidewalks, there seems to be a unspoken "don't walk at night" rule even in safe neighborhoods. If I do walk at night, I get suspicious looks. Am I frightening the neighborhood by going on a walk after dark? It sure feels like it.
In suburbia, I'll even get suspicious looks walking during the day - as if I'm scoping out houses to rob or something. And I'm a pretty boring safe looking type of guy (so I'm told, haha).
The exception to this I've found is if I'm walking a dog or walking with another person (preferably female) to legitimize me as a walker.
The longer I'm in these parts of suburbia, the more I realize that these attitudes are somewhat justified. Sadly, I don't think I've ever seen a man walking around the neighborhoods by himself unless he was a vagrant.
Apparently the vast majority of men in these neighborhoods just don't ever go on walks unaccompanied. Otherwise it would turn into a 'normal' activity and the suspiciousness of it would subside.
I realize there are probably great neighborhoods in the US for walking, but from my limited experience (living in ~10 states), they seem pretty rare outside of urban centers.
I spent a lot of time in Germany (US military communities) growing up and it was a totally different experience. Much of Europe that I've seen is likewise a vastly better experience for walking.
In 6 days I'm moving to Berlin. Why? Well, I'm bootstrapping a small systems-training business and want to live somewhere low cost and without a car. While cheap walkable places surely must exist in the US, they're rare and I haven't been able to find many that are also safe and not run-down. If I'm missing some, please let me know!
After being in US suburbia for the last few months, I'm really looking forward to being a first-class citizen as a walker again.
Re: The slow death of purposeless walking
#136Was living in NYC and absolutely loved being able to walk everywhere and not own a car. The last few months I've been in US suburbia though (Texas/Utah) and it seems actively hostile towards walkers in many places. Sometimes there's sidewalks, but often they're not continuous and just end for no apparent reason. You then have to walk in the road next to the cars for a ways and hope the sidewalk starts up again. Even…
Good luck with your move to Berlin! It might interest you that there are many car-sharing schemes operational in Berlin, so that you can go completely car-less, even if you have to cover a large distance or transport something every now and then.
Re: The slow death of purposeless walking
#137An odd bit of the history of walking I recently learned about: http://www.npr.org/2014/04/03/297327865/in-the-1870s-and-80s... > We may think of baseball as America's national pastime, but in the 1870s and 1880s there was another sports craze sweeping the nation: competitive walking. "Watching people walk was America's favorite spectator sport," Matthew Algeo says in his new book, Pedestrianism. http://en.wikipedia.o…
Amusing note from the NPR story: > Champagne was considered a stimulant. And a lot of trainers — these guys had trainers — advised their pedestrians to drink a lot of champagne during the race. They thought that this would give them some kind of advantage. The problem was a lot of these guys would drink it by the bottle. That definitely was not a stimulant to say the least.
Early Tour de France riders would take a bottle of brandy with them and swig it. It was supposed to dull the pain of steep climbs. At some point that was abandoned.
Re: The slow death of purposeless walking
#138Was living in NYC and absolutely loved being able to walk everywhere and not own a car. The last few months I've been in US suburbia though (Texas/Utah) and it seems actively hostile towards walkers in many places. Sometimes there's sidewalks, but often they're not continuous and just end for no apparent reason. You then have to walk in the road next to the cars for a ways and hope the sidewalk starts up again. Even…
Good luck with your move to Berlin! It might interest you that there are many car-sharing schemes operational in Berlin, so that you can go completely car-less, even if you have to cover a large distance or transport something every now and then.
Thanks! That's great to know :) I've been told Berlin is pretty spread-out, so it'll be good to have access to a vehicle for longer distances.
Re: The slow death of purposeless walking
#139Went walking today, left the audiobooks at home...
Re: The slow death of purposeless walking
#140Very few people, particularly in cities, are obliged to do much of it at all. Cars, bicycles, buses, trams, and trains all beckon. I think they got it backwards. It's suburbia that let's you use your car door to door. I haven't done the study, but based on my observations walking is one of the favorite activities of inhabitants of my city. In fact people come from far away just to spend the day walking around. Some i…
Completely agree that driving can work just as well for generating insights. Whether I'm walking or driving, I've found the key for me is to force my mind to be active. An easy way to do that is having a clear intention in mind when I set out - like a problem I want to solve or a situation I want to analyze.