Community Conversations

Walkability

A position paper by Dr. Deland S. Anderson regarding a Community Conversation held at the Pratt Museum on 20 February 2004.

This was not an average Community Conversation. For one thing, there was a huge crowd (75-100 people) which meant that many participants had standing room only. Second, the conversation followed upon a two hour long presentation by pedestrian activist and city designer, Dan Burden, of Walkability, Inc. Third, the group did not sit in its usual circle, nor did the audience members talk with one another—rather they directed questions or comments to Mr. Burden who answered them in depth. Essentially this was a three hour program on traffic design with a one hour question and answer session.

The importance to the community of this topic is beyond question, as is indicated both by the partnership of sponsors, i.e., the City of Homer, the Pratt Museum, and the Kachemak Heritage Land Trust, and by the big public turnout. The diligence of the audience members in absorbing Dan’s insights and information, raising pertinent questions, and making apt remarks also attests to the vitality of the subject. The Homer News addressed the topic in articles both in advance of the talk and in the following week’s paper (See Homer News, Feb. 19 and Feb. 26 editions.) This presentation was preceded by a Community Conversation on the topic of pedestrian rights this past fall (See write-up on the Pratt Museum’s website.) It was also followed by a meeting of the trails committee and architects under contract with the City of Homer to design a trails plan. Many of those who attended Mr. Burden’s presentation and his “walking audit” the following morning also gathered at the trails meeting. This made for a sustained conversation on how walking is important to a community and how to facilitate walking in a growing automobile culture.

Mr. Burden’s presentation was, as a number of listeners commented later, refreshingly simple. As to the question of why one should walk, the answer is because it promotes health. As to how a community can facilitate walking, the answer is to be found principally in a can of road paint. But, though these answers are simple, they are not necessarily easy to translate into action. The single greatest factor preventing the development or preservation of walkable communities is the automobile culture. It’s not just the fact of cars, but the assumptions and opinions that make up a pro-automobile ideology that must be tackled. To suggest, as Dan Burden has, that people should park farther away from where they are going and design roadways with narrower rather than wider lanes seems counterintuitive. What person who lives six miles from work would drive five miles and walk the rest of the way? The wiser person, it would seem upon reflection, as 30-40 minutes of walking a day significantly improves one’s health. What highway engineer would lobby for 10-foot wide traffic lanes rather than the standard 12-foot lane? The more prudent one, apparently, since traffic that moves slower, due to narrower lanes, moves more efficiently in an urban setting. But, though, these are true statements, much activism and education is required to persuade people to change their lives to accord with them. We have grown up in a place and time where driving as fast as we want fuels our sense of freedom. We seem to have an insatiable appetite for asphalt; more roads, wider roads, better maintained roads. And anyone who stands in the way of roads is considered un-American. But Dan Burden does not stand in the way of roads. Rather he stands on the side of the road and carefully examines the assumptions, principals, and practices according to which the road is designed. This is what he sees—with regard to urban settings, cities designed in favor of the automobile fail drivers and undermine the principal reason for cities, namely commerce. Faster traffic means greater danger and constricted flow due to turns and stops. A city choked with cars is a city people want to get out of, not go to. Hence commerce migrates to suburbs or retail strips outside the city limits. Accordingly, he argues for narrower roads, roads with more curves, streets with concrete or brick lanes rather than asphalt, roads to accommodate bicycle, pedestrian, residential and commercial automobile traffic, roads that lead ineluctably to the center of the town rather than skirt it. Such changes, if implemented, he maintains, lead to improved traffic flow, increased safety, more wholesome aesthetics, and robust retail growth. The case was illustrated with several examples of successful town and city makeovers as well as a few examples of how bad it can get if growth is left unchecked and allowed to proceed according to common assumptions.

Dan Burden’s visit to Homer lays one more pavement stone on the path leading to the creation of a vital town center. But much else remains to be done. First and foremost we must decide as a community what will serve to anchor the town center itself. Will it be a community garden, a sports complex, City Hall, the library, the college, a park, Fred Meyer, or what? And beyond the question of a town center lies the question of how Homer serves as a center for the whole region of the South Peninsula. If we are to be a hub, we must define where the spokes lead. Hence, as a people we must lobby our government agencies to design and build roads and sidewalks and trails according to our needs rather than according to faceless engineering standards or get-rich-quick schemes. We must work to maintain trail access to the hinterlands and to our beaches and coastline. We must educate people to the health and spiritual benefits of being a lifelong walker.