Jeff Speck on happiness and social justice, in addition to walkability

Jeff Speck has published an article called Ballet of the Sidewalk on MetropolisMag.com looking at what he didn't include in The Walkable City, happiness and social justice. It's a great, quick read that you will all enjoy. Here are two bits that I wanted to highlight:

"All the pleasures that were once provided publicly by the community are now provided privately by the middle-class house. The theater has been replaced by the giant-screen TV, the pool hall has made its way into the rec room, and the playground has become the backyard jungle gym.  

This is wrong. The privatization of the public realm means the end of community life, and we don’t need a new, better pope to tell us what that does to our spirit. [...] 

"Until now, quality of life was my ultimate measure. Now things don’t seem so simple. Somewhere, at the intersection of the quality-of-life city, the sustainable city, the equitable city, and the happy city, lies the good city. I don’t doubt that it is also the walkable city, but walkability alone does not get us there."

Hiking: A Social Cure for a Disconnected World (A re-post from Green Gal)

This was originally posted on Melissa's Green Gal blog here on March 27, 2013. It relates to walking and the power of walking with others, so it ties into this week's theme. It's also a love story!

In addition to being great exercise and a way to get to really awesome places in the world, hiking is also one of my favorite social activities. Since the time I was old enough to hike around Pinecrest Lake, I was making the trek with my family, trying to keep up with uncles and cousins in my little hiking boots and sunhat. I've always been a hiker, and I continue to be one, especially since I live in a hilly forest off the coast of the Pacific Ocean. How can you not be a hiker when you live two minutes from hiking trails and views of the ocean?

Given this interest in hiking and the opportunities for social engagement and community building that it offers, this past fall, a fellow student sustainability leader at UC Santa Cruz and I organized a hike into the Upper Campus trails that meander through forest and meadow above our university home. The goal was to bring together students, staff, faculty, community members interested in sustainability at UC Santa Cruz for a day hike to explore the natural space where we live, learn, and work.

My fellow sustainability hike leader and I had met at the Harvest Festival at the campus farm at the beginning of the quarter, where he served me countless bike-pedal-generated smoothies that he had made himself as I sat tabling for the Sustainability Office in the sweltering September heat.

A few days later, we spoke during dinner at the Student Environmental Center's General Gathering, and we realized we both had an interest in getting students from sustainability orgs on campus to spend more time together outside of org events. We swapped numbers, met in the library a couple times to draft an email, and then sent it out to everyone involved with sustainability work on campus, using the list-servs and email addresses that I have access to as the Education & Outreach Coordinator for the Sustainability Office (not an abuse of power, given that these hikes serve to further the aims of my job, even if I don't count those hours toward work). We even made a Facebook event for the hike. We were stoked.

The day came to meet up in the North Remote Parking Lot. I showed up first with my hiking shorts and hiking boots and reusable water bottle. No sign of anyone.

A few minutes later, I got a text message from my co-leader, who is the Transportation Coordinator for the organzation who hosted the General Gathering. He was on his way, and walked up from his redwood-surrounded apartment a few minutes later.

We waited. And waited.

"Well, it's time to go. Should we just start hiking?" No one else had shown up, and I'd received at least one text message from a friend who wasn't coming after all.

"Yeah, let's go."

We hiked up into the forest, just the two of us, on what would become not only the first of many sustainability inter-organizational hikes, but our first hike together, our first date, and our first chance to get to know each other through awesome conversation on the trail.

Hiking is a great social activity with both people you don't know well and people you do know well. You're moving around, exercising and getting high on endorphins, immersed in wild places that feed your soul, and there aren't really awkward silences. You're hiking outdoors, and silence is never awkward in the outdoors--there is so much to hear and experience and learn from when you are silent in a natural space.

We ended up hiking through Wilder Ranch State Park and all the way to the Highway 1, crossing the asphalt to reach our destination: the coast of the Pacific Ocean. We settled into some cliffs by a little cove, where the water rushed in at every wave and then receded. The sounds were soothing, the sun was warm, and we ate our lunch, enjoying the day, kind of glad that no one else showed up on the hike because of the opportunity it gave us to spend time together.

"I heard that some study found that chocolate is detected in the brain to cause more pleasure than kisses," he said to me. "But I don't really think so. What do you think?" I thought people only said those kinds of things in romantic movies, but I guess I was wrong. We had to test the theory, of course, so he shared an M&M with me, and then we shared a kiss. Like I said, hikes really are the best way to get to know someone.

Since then, he and I have organized a few other hikes, bringing together our friends, coworkers, and people who heard about the hike from Facebook or campus newsletters. I've had interesting conversations on the trail with people I never would have met otherwise, and I've realized how simple and worthwhile organizing hikes can be. People in the sustainability world of UC Santa Cruz now know about the hikes, and many who haven't come before have expressed interest in coming in the future. I cannot wait for spring quarter and the sunlight and flowers, which will hopefully draw even more people out to our hikes.

A photo of the fantastic group who came on our second inter-organizational sustainability community hike. I got to know some people on this hike who have brightened my life, and they continue to remain in my life either in person or through the perspectives I gained from talking with them.

As for hiking dates with my transportation coordinator friend, who has since become my boyfriend, we definitely continue to hike together, getting to know each other better every time. We just went on a gorgeous hike yesterday at a county park near San Jose, and we had a really good time enjoying the view from the top of a hill.

I believe that in addition to the conditions for conversation that hiking creates, the energies and connections that happen in nature between self and wilderness transform human social interactions into deeper connections when you spend time outdoors with someone one-on-one. Observing natural space, viewing the soil and vegetation and ecosystems, getting to know the environment, talking about where we would choose to live if we had been people living there thousands of years ago, and having moments of connection with nature together--all of this connects us to nature and ourselves.

Ultimately, hiking is a connecting activity, and in this digital age of social and human disconnection through overconnection with technology, hiking is a cure that I cannot get enough of. I encourage you to consider organizing a hike with your friends, significant other, or family. It's easy, fun, really inexpensive, and the opportunities for engagement with yourself, nature, and others are so rewarding!

Thanks for reading!
Green Gal

Camille's Transportation History

Write your transportation history - Think about the various modes of transportation that you've used in your life at different times and places. How do your experiences with these modes affect your perception of the world, your community, etc.? Have you had pivotal moments on buses, bike rides, car trips, etc. that have changed how you see the world?

I grew up in Eureka, CA, a town in Humboldt County that had its climax during a time of unregulated logging and fishing, where an abundance of resources was excitedly consumed and a town was built as a dwelling for these rugged laborers.  Now it’s made up of a mixture of conservative old people and liberal growers, probably in pursuit of a quiet, undemanding life in what’s left of the lush redwood forest that is Humboldt County.  In terms of geography, the town is somewhat sprawling with no central business hub, as most jobs were concentrated at the mills which were built on the outskirts of town. Because of this, I would guess that at least 90% of the population in Eureka owns a car. Growing up, I didn't know anyone who rode their bike except for the occasional recreational weekend ride, and as a kid I saw the bus system as a dirty, dangerous and unreliable last resort for transportation. The city itself is pretty flat and not too spread out so biking would have been an incredibly easy way to get to school or work. Using a car was such a normalized way of getting around that it almost seemed ridiculous to consider walking somewhere, even if it was less than a mile away. I realize now that Eureka is a strange, isolated place where people are unconscious (in a lot more ways than transportation) of overarching issues of sustainability.

Up until high school, my parents would drive me to school or anywhere I needed to go, but once I was old enough that they felt comfortable leaving me to walk, they often left me to find my own way to and from school. Because I saw walking as a painfully slow waste of time, I started skateboarding to and from school, which was drastically faster than walking and a lot more fun.

However, once I got my drivers’ license and my parents bought me a little Toyota, I started driving to and from school, as most of the more affluent kids did. There was a whole culture built around driving at my school; different parking lots informally designated to different social groups on campus: the hicks parked their trucks in the parking lot near the metal and the wood shops; the jocks and preps parked their expensive cars in the lot next to the language building; the seniors had their own lot, etc.

Once I graduated from high school and decided that I was going to UC Santa Cruz, I figured I’d buy a bike since my car had been totaled by a reckless lady who’d run a red light on me that summer. I had a mountain bike at the time but decided I wanted a road bike because it seemed like the hip thing at the time. I took my grandpa’s 1970s Univega Sportour to Porter College but was intimidated by the hilliness of the university so it sat locked up outside of my dorm for the entirety of my Freshman year. My sophomore year, I lived pretty far from campus, and, again inspired by my frustration with the sluggishness of walking and with my impatience in waiting for buses, I started taking the bike shuttle to campus and biking home. I began to recognize other people who rode their bikes a lot and started to see how my role as a bicyclist made a statement in the politics of sustainable transportation.

Now, my junior year, I use my bike more than ever not only as a means of beating traffic and avoiding the bus system, but for fun and exercise too! At this point it’s also a choice I feel I’ve consciously made, now that I have the means to buy a car but don’t find it a necessary or sensible means of transportation anymore.