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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
One caveat: this city walking has to take place in a proper city environment. Second Avenue in New York? Fantastic. Walking through a forest of concrete overpasses and weedy verges and parking lots and signs reading "Peds Cross Other Side"? Not so much.
Unfortunately Seattle has far more of the latter than the former. We are a collection of villages joined together by cars. The villages are interesting but the connections are usually not, and because of the requirements of cars the distances are absurd. Fremont and Capitol Hill are lovely places to walk around, but walking from one to the other is hell.
When I lived in Chicago I would take long walks all over the city, and loved stopping in cemeteries along the way. It was the best of both worlds. I could step off a busy sidewalk and into a wide grassy space with few or no people, the sounds of birds and squirrels, even the occasional fox or coyote. I don't need to do that as much in Seattle -- there are fewer people and more quiet spaces -- but it doesn't stop me from craving the occasional visit to the mountains, just to get lost in my thoughts, the sound of the trees and my own breathing. It's bliss.
If you have to ask then you're severely lacking in imagination. Humans are capable of an amazing array of feelings, desires, and things that make them happy.
Kids are generally given more freedom to roam in the cul de sacs of the suburbs.
The quoted author is likely guilty of seeing causation where it is not necessarily to be found. My older girl got squirmy and bored with the stroller around the same age, but we hadn't moved anywhere. She had just learned to walk and wanted her mobility.
If everybody wanted to live in the same place, there wouldn't be room for them all.
Totally subjective.
Humanity spent the vast majority of its existence wandering around in the "rural" areas. And the Number 1 most significant factor in whether or not a person is interested and willing to help ensure the preservation of wild areas, is whether or not they spent free time in the woods as a child.
You want to have urban people, yet also ensure the non-destruction of wilderness? Ensure that children get lots of unsupervised time to run around in the woods.
I know one thing that does not take place in cities that may be important: growing the food that feeds the city. The urban can not support itself without the rural, and it is true the other way around in our society.
Yes. I spent countless enjoyable hours running around my grandparents' farm, which was about 1 hour outside the city where we lived.
And my dad moved us to the country for 2 years, and while winters were unbelievably boring, during the summers I had a blast tearing through meadows and woods on my 80cc Honda dirt bike, swimming/boating in the lake, shooting my BB gun, walking to the store to buy candy and play pinball, and hanging out with the kids who's parents owned the nearby summer cabins.
Because we're educated, worldly, open-minded urbanites rather than ignorant, provincial, solopsistic assholes. I mean, that is what we as city-dwellers are, right?
My friend was born and lived in Manhattan. He loved the city. But at the same time, he knew he had to leave and went to LA.
He used to describe crossing the street there like running bases. You have to look all around, make sure you can go...then tear off and charge into the crowds blocking your safe arrival at the corner!
In the suburbs, you can travel long, long always without deadly crossings. And we do. When we walk and by, we walk by the half miles. Taking an elevator down to the street and walking half a block to sit and have a coffee, and then walking 100 feet to train station and sitting on a train and then getting on an escalator to go to an elevator to walk 100 feet to a cubicle is not walking. It's sitting.
In the cities where I have lived I can get up from my desk and walk home. Granted, sometimes it's a long walk, but it's something I can do. When I lived in suburbs and exurbs it was significantly harder to walk home, because there were fewer sidewalks and fewer places to cross the street.
Also, if I lived in the suburbs now I wouldn't be able to walk home at all, I'd have to sit on a train or a bus. Living in the city I don't have to sit at all, because everything I need is in walking distance.
I see far more people walking on Kent East Hill than I ever did in Seattle.
And for the "density" of Seattle downtown, there aren't that many walkers around.
For goodness sake, most were whining when they took away the RFA because they would jump on a bus to go four blocks!
Meanwhile, "Oh look, another tree, and another tree, snow again, building a snowman again, etc. boooooring,"
I've lived in cities for over 40 years, I have an ocean 6 blocks away and a vibrant city at it's back, thank God.
When I could drive through the suburbs and country: booooring, walking in cities, always something interesting going on (I prefer walk cities with good public transportation and even L.A. supplies that.)
When I travel, natural wonders are okay for a day, and then: "What, another red mesa?"
That's just me. However, the story of civilization is the story of cities.
Also, perhaps you see a lot of pedestrians in Kent, but are they running errands? Where and how do they shop? How do they get to and from work? All evidence suggests that people who live outside of urban centers spend far more time in cars, getting from place-to-place. Suburbs and exurbs aren't friendly to pedestrians by design, they are built for people to travel by car. The argument that it's safer to walk because there are fewer busy intersections ignores the busy arterial roads, strip malls and sidewalk-free streets that practically define suburban life.
The problem you have, Fnarf, is with the rural brain drain. Something your attitude helps drive.
Farmers? I'm supposed to give a shit what Archer Daniels Midland and Monsanto think? The kind of farmer you're imagining, the sun-baked old man in coveralls pausing in his field to wipe the sweat from his brow, doesn't exist anymore. Farming is as corporate and industrial an enterprise as car manufacturing.
I have a hard time understanding how it can be foundational to anything more than a brief lecture aimed at middle-brow people unfamiliar with systems thinking.
The vast majority is "Archers Daniels Midland and Monsanto".
And yes, it is absolutely true. By any measure of inputs and outputs, giant farms are way more efficient than small ones. I do not like this fact. I wish I could feel great about buying from the nice folks at the farmers' market or local coop, that I could vilify factory and corporate farms, etc. But much like the rural/agrarian 'green' myth bebunked in the book the post was about, that is not the reality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BP_Pedestri…
Unfortunately, most small farms end up using a boatload of energy running small, inefficient tractors and other machinery and use more energy/ton to transport at each step. I can't recall the citation off the top of my head, but one recent audit found that 'locavore' eating actually still involves a larger carbon footprint than standard grocery store eating for this very reason.
@40, it takes less energy to fly lamb from New Zealand or flowers from Colombia or Kenya than to produce those items here. American ag is extraordinarily energy- and fertilizer-intensive.
So stupid.
[and shitty parents too].
http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/11/14/t…
@12, yes.
@28, your caricature of how "rural" folks are is pretty stereotypical. There are people who own farmland and care deeply about it, and the rest of the natural world.
It's a shame that without the noise and obvious human busyness, people can't be satisfied by the way nature is, constantly moving and changing, with life and death everywhere. I know how hippie-ish that sounds, but I dare city dwellers to spend a few hours in the wilderness without any other distractions.
And it doesn't matter why anyone "wants" a particular lifestyle. Personal preferences. Sadly those preferences affect all of us. I strongly believe people care more about their planet if they get to spend time in its natural splendor, the way things were for the vast majority of our existence.