Simply Simon

The walkable city

Good to see Patricia Maunder’s article in The Age yesterday, Worth the Walk. I’ve rabbited on before about the lost art of walking as a spiritual discipline. Maunder tracks all sorts of movements and people who argue the connection between the walkable city and its livability; I’d prefer calling it the city’s spirit.

Interestingly, Melbourne’s CBD is touted as the leading example of walking-city excellence in Australia [I only wish some of the drivers knew that!]. At the same time, our greater metropolitan region is in “as sad a state” as any other.

Walk21 is is an international movement that champions “the development of healthy sustainable and efficient communities where people choose to walk.” It’s International Charter for Walking is an inspiring document which begins with the words of the movement’s founder John Butcher:

“Walking is the first thing an infant wants to do and the last thing an old person wants to give up. Walking is the exercise that does not need a gym. It is the prescription without medicine, the weight control without diet, and the cosmetic that can’t be found in a chemist. It is the tranquilliser without a pill, the therapy without a psychoanalyst, and the holiday that does not cost a penny. What’s more, it does not pollute, consumes few natural resources and is highly efficient. Walking is convenient, it needs no special equipment, is self-regulating and inherently safe. Walking is as natural as breathing.”

If you’re interested, the Pedestrian Council of Australia has some good resources.

Urban strides

There’s an interesting article in today’s Age. It's a report by John von Radowitz on the results of a major study measuring the pace at which people walk in large cities around the world.

In the early 90s, the American psychologist Robert Levine measured the average pace at which people walked in the major cities of 32 countries across the world. A decade later, the British psychologist Richard Wiseman undertook the same project, carefully replicating the conditions of the first study. Comparing the results, Wiseman concludes that there has been an average increase of 10% in walking speeds in the past decade. The greatest increase was found in Singapore with a rise of 30%.

According to Wiseman, "This simple measurement provides a significant insight into the physical and social health of a city. The pace of life in our major cities is now much quicker than before. This increase in speed will affect more people than ever, because for the first time in history the majority of the world's population are now living in urban centres."

Wiseman adds, "The psychology is basically that people's walking pace is determined by how much they think they're in a hurry, how quickly they think they should be doing things."

Wiseman's findings will appear in more detail in his forthcoming book, Quirkology. Hmm ... quirky!

Wanderlust

My daughter Ali and I were sitting together on the train a few mornings back. After noting the title of the book open on my lap, she gave me one of those looks. “Seriously Dad,” she said coldly, “who apart from you would read a book about the history of walking?” She’s probably right. I do make some odd choices, but when I saw this one on the shelf at the Hill of Content—one of the most reassuring bookshops in Melbourne—I smiled and slipped out the credit card.

Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust: A History of Walking was first released in 2000. Old news I guess, but it’s such a good book. Perhaps my interest is out of proportion because of how much I walk. Willingly. In fact, it’s one of the pleasures of my life. No mountain treks, nature trails or anything quite as virtuous. My nightly routine is to simply roam the streets and laneways of the city where I live. For me, walks like these are endlessly fascinating, space to think and breathe in the life of the neighbourhood. To risk overstatement, it’s life restoring. I cannot imagine doing without it.

Solnit walks too, but just as significantly, she writes beautifully. What’s more, she is passionate about the place of walking in our human development, our cultural history and in our individual and communal well-being. Solnit ranges broadly in her book, from the evolutionary beginnings of bipedalism to the religious significance of pilgrimage and labyrinths. Following the poets and writers of great literature, we begin in the garden and journey beyond to the country lanes and then the mountains and wilderness. And finally we walk the city streets. Along the way we discover walking as creativity, pilgrimage, restoration, celebration, discovery, protest and demonstration, endurance and achievement, well-being, consumerism and citizenship.

All in all, I was struck again with just how spiritual the act of walking can be.

Some thoughts worth quoting:

"Walking has created paths, roads, trade routes; generated local and cross-continental senses of place; shaped cities, parks; generated maps, guidebooks, gear, and, further afield, a vast library of walking stories and poems, of pilgrimages, mountaineering expeditions, meanders, and summer picnics. The landscapes, urban and rural, gestate the stories, and the stories bring us back to this sites of this history."

"I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought, or thoughtfulness."

"When you give yourself to places, they give you yourself back; the more one comes to know them, the more one seeds them with the invisible crop of memories and associations that will be waiting for you when you come back, while new places offer up new thoughts, new possibilities. Exploring the world is one of the best ways of exploring the mind, and walking travels both terrains."

"Walking is only the beginning of citizenship, but through it the citizen knows his or her city and fellow citizens and truly inhabits the city rather than a small privatized part thereof. Walking the streets is what links up reading the map with living one's life, the personal microcosm with the public macrocosm, it makes sense of the maze all around."

"The treadmill is a corollary to the suburb and the autotropolis: a devise with which to go nowhere in places where there is now nowhere to go. ... It too could be called Calvinist technology, in that it provides accurate numerical assessments of the speed, 'distance' covered, and even heart rate, and it eliminates the unpredictable and unforseeable from the routine--no encounters with acquaintances or strangers, no sudden revelatory sights around a bend. On the treadmill, walking is no longer contemplating, courting, or exploring. Walking is the alternate movement of the lower limbs."

Walking the Mall

Always in pursuit of free Internet access, I sit in the local shopping mall, discreetly tucked away in a corner of the food court. But I’m noticed. People stare, most annoyingly a particular group. They circle in a steady stream, uniformly hugging the court perimeters as tightly as they can. They’re mostly older folks, all decked out in their tennis shoes and sweatbands. The women smile at me each time they pass while the men lift their hats and nod: my own personal space invaders.

One couple stops to marvel at my laptop: Ralph and Mary-Lou. They couldn’t be more engaging, or impressed! I soften and respond politely. They tell me they come every morning to do ten brisk laps of the entire mall. I nod with approval. That’s quite something, I think to myself.

Walking at the mall makes sense this time of year. It’s too hot outside, and if a treadmill doesn’t do it for you, then the mall’s a good option. The truth is, though, it’s not only a summer phenomenon. In fact, walkers are a common sight in American malls all year round. I’ve seen them in LA, New York, Seattle, and Chicago. On my last visit to the Dallas Galleria, I noticed there’s even a club for mall walkers with bonus health seminars and social functions; members get early access to the mall before the shoppers arrive! Apparently, clubs like these are growing nation-wide. The mall bookshop even sells how-to books for the beginner, and from all accounts they’re selling well.

It seems the American mall has emerged as an attractive alternative to the local park or neighbourhood. Ralph and Mary-Lou come year ‘round. “It always feels safe,” they say. It’s true. The mall does feel safe. Grinning security guards stroll the promenades from morning to night. It’s a controlled space. No surprises. It’s predictable and secure. Then again, I think to myself, this is not New York. It’s rural Texas, a place where people smile at anything that moves!

Of course, the almost complete absence of footpaths outside can’t help. Some of the older neighbourhoods still seem to have them: sidewalks they’re called here. But in the newer estates they’ve disappeared: an endangered species! That’s a bit sad to me. I’m a walker. I love to walk, but the thought of a treadmill makes my eyes glaze over. And the mall … well, to each his own I suppose. To me there’s just something about a good, old-fashioned footpath. It’s hard to explain without sounding a bit dorky, but walking the neighbourhood, like I do each night back in Parkville, makes me feel connected and at home. I miss it.

In reality, I guess the footpath tells of a day long gone when walking was a daily routine, a necessity for everyday life. At their most basic, footpaths are connectors, taking us from home to corner store, local church, bus stop or neighourhood park. Times have changed. Sometimes I wonder if there’s a connection here between the disappearance of the sidewalk and the almost complete demise of the local store—the milkbar, the green grocer, the butcher and baker. There is simply no alternative now when it comes to basic foodstuffs. HEB, the ubiquitous megamart, reigns supreme. If ever there was anything else, it ain’t no more! And you couldn’t walk to the HEB if you tried. Trekking through the expansive car parking lots would demand both a good dose of courage and a packed lunch.

Just last night we visited some friends in one of the newest housing estates. The homes are extraordinary, all with sweeping driveways and the greenest of lawns. But no sidewalks, no street lamps. I know we can’t return to some golden age of neighbourhood life—if ever there really was one—but are there some things worth preserving?

I’ve not long finished reading Eric Jacobsen’s ‘Sidewalks in the Kingdom’. “All living is local,” he argues, and when we persist in ignoring or neglecting our most immediate environments, our communal life is ultimately impoverished. Jacobsen reckons we need to “train our eyes to see the corner coffee shop and grocery [store] in a neighborhood as the rare and beautiful species that they have become.”

I’ve never read a book like Jacobsen’s before. The fact that someone would take seriously the way neighbourhoods are built and cities are planned, and do so out of a commitment to the kingdom of God is fascinating. Perhaps my infatuation with footpaths can be claimed as spiritual after all. Maybe I’ll start a club!

[My friend Alison has written a wonderful piece on walking. I felt inspired when I read it! It's called 'On the Way'. You can find it at http://timeforacuppa.blogspot.com ]