Reply #27: Let's think beyond simple transportation issues WRT cars...

[IrateCitizen]

I should start off by stating that I am lucky enough to live in an area (Westchester County, NY) where I do not need a car on an everyday basis. My wife and I live in an actual town and can walk for most of our errands, assuming that the weather isn't bad. For those outside walking range, I throw the pannier packs on my bicycle and ride in good weather. When I need to go into NYC I walk 5 minutes to the Metro North RR station and hop on.

And ramapo, I can certainly sympathize with the problems of living in North Jersey. It's a nightmare if you don't worship the automobile. I don't think that there is a place in your area where you actually can walk more than 100 yds, even if you WANT to.

Someone raised the point earlier that the "ideal" brought about by suburbia is no longer "privacy", but "isolation". I fully agree. Most parts of suburbia are so completely lacking in community that people will live next door to each other for years yet not ever really know one another. Personally, I think that suburbia is the ultimate living arrangement for a society that has commoditized everything, and pushed out anything that does not fit commoditization. Community cannot be commoditized, so it has been pushed out in favor of an arrangement more concerned with who has the nicest house, nicest yard, nicest car. In this arrangement, since adults don't know one another, children aren't allowed to play outside like they used to, so they spend time isolated indoors playing video games, watching TV, and gorging on junk food.

But, I digress from my points I'd like to make, which are primarily twofold...

First, one of the problems we have that is directly attributable to the automobile and our living arrangements is obesity. It just floors me to no end that when we talk about national problems with obesity, the thing that is NEVER mentioned is the way that people have to get into their car and drive every damned place they want to go instead of being able to WALK. Hell, I find it much more pleasurable to walk down to the store than to drive -- and it's better for me too. I can run into people I know and talk to them, I can see other people out on the sidewalks, it's just a much more pleasurable experience. I'm just lucky I live in an area where this kind of activity is possible, because they're fewer and further between now than they used to be.

This brings me to point #2, an idea pushed by Kunstler in some of his more reasoned works like Home to Nowhere and The Geography of Nowhere -- the idea that making the automobile the thing around which we plan our residential and commercial structures makes those structures and our communities downright UGLY. As an example, I live in a co-op on a side street. When my wife and I walk the dogs or have to go into town, we walk on a sidewalk that has a row of trees between it and the street. Then, there is a row of parked cars. Finally, you arrive at the street itself. The idea here is that the trees and parked cars serve as a buffer between the pedestrian and traffic, making the experience much more aesthetically enjoyable. Contrast that with the "main strip" that runs out of town. There, you walk on a sidewalk that is directly adjacent to the road, with cars whizzing by at 40 mph. The line of trees is between you and the field of asphalt that serves as a parking lot. Everywhere you look, all you see is CARS. It's just plain depressing -- it actually makes your walk rather unenjoyable.

Now, when we're encouraging people to walk places, in which setting are they more likely to walk? One in which the streets are narrow and pedestrians are separated from traffic, with shops and houses right on the street and a lack of oversized parking lots? Or would it be the places where you are next to traffic whizzing by, with all the attendant fumes and noise, and nothing but asphalt fields everywhere you look? I personally believe that by making the automobile the center of our lives, we have made our communities unwelcoming. That perhaps explains why, when you find an actual town, the most expensive real estate is that which places people IN THE TOWN, amidst all the commercial activity -- and when you find the more typical arrangement of a commercial strip fed by a multitude of cul-de-sac developments, all people want to do is escape from the "community" to their own private 1/2 acre and 2200 sf of "frontier home" where they can be totally isolated from everyone and everything unless they get into their car and drive....