Thinking about sprawl
It may seem like a basic observation, but sometimes we need to be reminded that your transportation needs are shaped by where you start and end your journey. If you live above the store in which you work, there is no need to build an heavy rail subway to get you to work. Conversely, if you live on an acre of land in a housing development surrounding by other housing developments and you work in an office park surrounded by other office parks, some highways may be in order.
But do we really understand how our fellow citizens live? I ask because of two conversations I had in the past week that led me to question whether it's even possible to get one segment of the population to understand another.
The first conversation took place with a co-worker, who, upon finding out that I grew up near the middle of a very large city, asked me how kids can grow up in such an environment. "You have backyards, we have parks," I said. I rode a bike, played sports (albiet badly) and did what any other American kid raised in the last 50 years did growing up, minus spending an hour or more per day in the back of the family car. I would have been more amazed that the possibility of growing up in an apartment building needed an explination, but I get asked similar questions fairly often.
The second conversation took place a few days later, with friends from back home. Two of them had never learned to drive since driving is such a useless skill in New York and they went to NYU. One of them asked the rhetorical question, "How do people live in the suburbs? It's all driving, driving and more driving, to get even the simplest thing. And what about kids? Could you imagine having to beg for a ride every time you wanted to see your friends?"
This is what we've become.
Post Author:
rj3 | 02:04 PM |
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