More so than most places the neighborhood where I live can be painted as being just about anywhere on a continuum from Shangri-La to Shithole. This goes for the streetscape, the human landscape, economic vibrancy, and pretty much anything else one could think of to describe from an urbanist’s perspective.
Walkability is a good example. My home has a walk score of 87:
New York City, famously America’s #1 most walkable city, gets a walk score of 89:
So I live in a very walkable place; theoretically. I can walk to the bank, a produce market, a handful of delis, the post office, city hall, 7 museums, the pharmacy, the symphony, a national park, schooling from pre-k to doctoral programs, my primary care physician, a medical laboratory or two, the dentist, dozens of restaurants, a sports and entertainment arena, the library, the dry cleaner, the bus station, the train station, and various other places.
Do I? Do I walk to these places?
In the last few weeks I’ve walked to the doctor, a meeting at city hall, the symphony, a couple of restaurants, a beer garden, an art show, and the bank. My wife has gone to the library, the music school, and a number of other places as well on foot since she doesn’t have a car on most days. Going back a bit further, perhaps a year, we’ve walked to nearly all of these places once or twice.
It sounds like we walk quite a bit in this most walkable of neighborhoods; but we don’t, not to me. We don’t because we still contemplate, and sometimes choose, taking the car or avoiding the errand altogether instead of walking.
We don’t because theoretical walkability and real walkability are different in some very important ways. In a theoretically very walkable place “there are grocery stores”, but in a truly walkable neighborhood those grocery stores reliably carry the products you need; in a theoretically walkable place “there are shops”, in a truly walkable place those shops contain useful items not found in the average CVS or at the dollar store. A theoretically walkable place can still have somewhat scary or at least very strange people lurking in unusual places, in a truly walkable place there are enough fellow “normal” pedestrians to make one comfortable when one is out and about at a reasonable hour.
So yes, last Saturday my wife and I walked to Nadim’s for dinner before we went to the symphony’s opening night gala. As the concert ended we filed out with 2,000 or so other concert goers, 90% of whom turned right toward the parking garage to hop in their cars and head home, another 5% were being picked up by bus or van on Court Street, by the time my wife and I had taken the turn onto Main Street there were 4 concert goers left (LuLu’s piano teacher and her cellist husband!) and one block later, when we turned on to State Street, perhaps a block and a half from symphony hall…it was just the two of us; dressed up, all alone walking the last 3 blocks home. We didn’t see another soul on the rest of the walk. A street light was out on the highway entrance ramp style Dwight/Maple connector: Not fun. Will we walk to the symphony in October? Maybe.
Then there was the time I didn’t want to walk all the way to the awesome AC Produce to buy a potato. (Well, in truth we NEVER DO. It’s awesome, but it’s slightly too far, and the route takes you directly through a stretch of the South End that’s simply too filled with lowlifes. It’s not fun.) So I walked 3x as far trying to find a spud at any one of a number of truly crappy under stocked and “over filthed” bodegas and some nice specialty markets without any luck. I could have purchased a few mangos or papayas and plenty of sopressata or even prosciutto but nary a potato in sight; Pea Pod and our CSA to the rescue! Walkscore’s formula doesn’t include an algorithm for the likelihood of meeting aggressive panhandlers, and can’t distinguish between a market that can provide staple products and one where there’s plenty of “Gorgonzola dolce” on offer, but no butter; until it does it will be just a well publicized “beta” program.
For my neighborhood to become a walker’s paradise there need to be more things to walk to more often for more people. When we don’t need to check our calendar and our watch to know, not that our destination is offering whatever it’s offering, but to know that enough other things are happening that there will be people actively engaged in going to and fro and that we won’t be the only ones on the sidewalk. My neighborhood will go from theoretically walkable to actually walkable the moment I stop wondering whether we should drive instead, or whether we should just stay home. Walking needs to stop being an act of rebellion and start being an act of conformity
Agreed: the walk-score ratings are ridiculous.
But you’re old enough not to use “More so” the way you’re using it in the first sentence, there. Please do us all a favor: eliminate that unnecessary and jarring “so.” “So” only works when you have already introduced the idea to which it is supposed to refer. “More so” without a previous referent is the annoying panhandler of grammar. “More” will do just fine by itself. OK? Cool. Now, I’m gonna go find a potato.
I’m comfortable with it as is. Thank you for taking the time to comment though.
One of your best posts.
My house on Main Street in a WI small town is extremely walkable in theory and in practice. Few to no low lives at any hour, many bars and restaurants, grocery store, shops, library, churches, community centers, post office. . .yet very few walkers.
People drive because they are young and it’s uncool not to; they drive because they are old and they are not physically able to walk; they drive because they are of working age and they have no time. They drive because it is too hot, too cold, too dark, too rainy, too windy, too buggy. They drive because they might need to carry something. They drive because they are wearing fancy shoes. They drive to the gym so they have time to work out. They drive because they are too out of shape to walk. They drive because it costs nothing to park.
I think most people drive, however, because most people drive. Since so few people walk, there is a stigma. They don’t consider walking. It does not cross their minds. It is not a thing. Walking is suspect.
That is the mindset that I’d like to overcome.
I walk.
Thank you for your kind words and thoughtful comments!
Thanks–this was very interesting to me. Actually over the last week your posts and a couple of articles at StrongTowns have helped me get a much better handle on how much my understanding of the world is distorted by my own very unusual experience. I have always been a little confused by Chuck Marohn’s resistance to holding up “density” as a virtue, and also by his bias against big government infrastructure programs, but somehow this past week I started to understand it better, perhaps partly because of your post last week. It seems to me that one reason so many urbanists are knee-jerk density-lovers is because they are like me and live in places that are both quite dense and quite walkable. I’ve never in all of my adult life lived anywhere I couldn’t easily do all my grocery shopping on foot (or by bike–which by the way might work for you to get you past the lowlifes)–and everywhere I’ve ever lived has been quite dense, and like you I love it in Europe. So of course I think everyone should live like I do. But what people like me don’t think about enough is how unusual our situations are–in America, that is, since europe is different–and your post today shows how. My house has a walkscore of 89, and most of the time I leave my house I do not get in the car. I bike to work, my kids bike to school, I bike or walk to the food store, I walk out to get food all the time–just by crossing one street I can go to my bank, get coffee, beer and wine, donuts, chinese, greek food, steak, bar food, sushi, or a haircut. A nice playground is right next to my deck. Friends are across the street or around the corner. And in ten minutes walk I could be on the subway or commuter rail, at a movie theater, at a bookstore, a hardware store, a dozen more restaurants, etc. But this is maybe mostly because I live in a neighborhood that by now is extremely expensive. My small two-family house is worth close to a million dollars, twice what I paid just over ten years ago, and the rent from the downstairs apartment pays for our mortgage and property taxes. So… like a lot of highly educated urban elites, even though as a HS teacher I don’t actually make that much money, I live in a totally unrepresentative way. Even my kids’ schools, which used to feel more like urban schools, are increasingly full of wealthy and upper-middle-class kids. And this sheltered environment allows people like me, and lots of urban urbanists, to think that everyone else should be able to live the same way. But maybe they can’t? I don’t know, I’m still working through it. Still wondering about Europe, too. Hm. Anyway, thanks for the thoughtful post. And as a HS English teacher I’m fine with that “so”, even if it is strictly unnecessary.
I could not agree more with the inanity of Walkscore. Theoretically, my home and workplace have a nearly identical Walkscore. Home is in downtown Warren, RI (Named a Great American Neighborhood by the APA today) where I can walk to a very useful grocery, several useful shops, a dozen or so good restaurants, local bars, and coffee shops- all in a town of 10,000. Work is nowhereville on a 4 lane highway with almost no walking infrastructure, ridiculous street crossings, and only a few destinations even worth visiting (all chains, of course).
Furthermore, neither location is given a Bikescore, despite home being nicely positioned along the East Bay Bike Path in RI with 5 minute access to a much larger grocery store and probably about 60 good shops and eating establishments within an easy half hour ride. Needless to say there is no good cycling at work.