Screaming lobsters living the car-free life

[By Merry]

What would you do if you woke up one day and there weren't any cars?

Oregon is in general quite bicycle friendly, and Portland even more so. To prove it, the city is putting on a street party, taking back the street from cars. It's a Car-Free day, shutting down part of North Portland for a day.

On June 22nd, a circular route of traffic-free streets in North Portland will link four parks: Arbor Lodge, Peninsula, Unthank, and Overlook. The resulting 6-mile loop will be available for pedestrians, cyclists, rollerbladers, skaters, etc. (While streets will be closed to automotive through traffic, a soft-closure will assure that neighboring residents have access to and from their homes.)

If you wanted to ride your bicycle (or walk, skate, skip or jump) outside but were afraid to do so, something like this sounds perfect. Utopian, maybe, but fun -- and practical too. Walkable neighborhoods help you keep fit and also help you keep in touch with people around you. If we all got out of our cars and walked or biked or hung out out on the front porch, it would create a community. Especially in newer areas of town, people don't use the front door. You get in and out of the house via the car via the garage. Neighbors? Don't meet 'em. Rarely even see 'em.

It's a crazy idea, but it just might work... or not ...
Two things come to mind:

1. If you want to get people to adopt a car-free existence, even part time, you have to provide a safe environment for them to experience it in. This event seems designed to create just such an environment.
2. No matter how this shindig is arranged, it is going to seriously piss off some people.

Am I pissing people off by writing another 'walk in your neighborhood' post? I'll have to check the temperature as the post goes on.

Some possible reasons why you would need a car
I mean, I'm not a totally unreasonable woman. I can see that some people absolutely need cars, especially if:

• you have a long commute and don't have public transport
• you have to drive kids, maybe even your own, to soccer practice here and dance recitals there
• you live in Wyoming, or the Northwest Territories, or the Australian Outback, anywhere that involves long stretches of nothing very much interspersed with the occasional mammal.

It's a long way to Tipperary... or anywhere else, frankly

How am I doing so far? Are you miffed yet? Okay, then I'll go on ...

Some possible solutions

• Can't help people who have to travel long distances because they live in Wyoming or the Northwest Territories or the Australian Outback. However, these areas are sparsely populated, at least compared to the concentrations of humanity found in the cities and suburbs. Concentrating on the highly populated areas would make a huge difference to the high demand for gasoline.
• People who have to haul children from point A to point B? Seems to me the best way to solve this would be to restructure the community so that A and B are within walking distance of each other . Planned communities, like Orenco Station, are designed so that you can get to most of the places you need to go without using a car. Likewise the older communities have parks, schools, and local shopping areas within walking distance. It's the neighborhoods in-between that are the worst designed and sadly also the most numerous.
  
• People who drive long hours to commute to their jobs? If a convenient commuter train or lightrail were available, a lot of people would use it. Especially with the cost of gas increasing so radically. Solutions like these are expensive in the short term -- but so is the cost of gas. (Public transport costs also go up when fuel prices increase but -- this is the catch -- not as much.)
  

Getting a bit warm in here, is it? Well, maybe I'll just go a little bit further...

Screaming lobsters
Stephanie from Back in Skinny Jeans wrote a post about the high cost of gas. One commenter pointed out that a lot of people in Europe have always had high gas prices. I think that's the point. It's not the fact that gas prices are high, it's the fact that they've suddenly increased a whole hell of a lot that's upsetting people.

(Crabby? Don't read these next two paragraphs, okay?)

Supposedly, the best way to cook a lobster is to place it in tepid water and slowly increase the temperature so gradually that the lobster doesn't realize how hot the temperature is getting. (I say supposedly because all the sources I could find that did any research into invertebrate physiology said that lobsters do not register pain. Just to be on the safe side, I've vowed to strike lobsters from my diet. If you're interested, here's the R.S.P.C.A.'s view on how to cook lobsters.)

The other generally used method of cooking a lobster is to plunge it into boiling water. It's quick and it's supposed to be painful. The lobsters are reputed to 'scream.' Some people say that since lobsters don't have vocal cords, they're not actually screaming; still, it's a useful metaphor for what's happening with gas prices in this neck of the woods. We're screaming lobsters around here.

Hmmmn... nobody's throwing stones at the blog yet. Maybe it's safe to go a little bit further...

The first thing to change
Eventually we'll learn to ease up on our car-dependency. Maybe. Or else the thought of tearing up whole neighborhoods will scare people into buying hybrids and electric bicycles.

Suburbs and cities can be changed. But the first thing to change is the mindset that everyone needs a car all the time. Try one day without a car, to see how it feels. Test out bicycling, jogging, yada, in an environment where it feels safe and you're more likely to survive enjoy the experience and maybe repeat it.

That's why I like the idea of this car-free day. It will be kind of cool to see how this works out.

Cyclists take over I-5!

On the other hand, if you hear of riots breaking out in North Portland later this month, you'll know why.

Don't blame Crabby; this is all my fault
If you are sitting there steaming, glaring at the computer screen, and snarling "Merry, you fool!" please bear in mind:

1 - These are my thoughts, don't snarl at Crabby

2 - I was wrong once. I could be wrong twice. Something's got to change, that's all. Anything that nudges us towards self-propelled transportation sounds pretty good right about now.

I'm going to go hide behind Crabby now.

Portland's version of a traffic jam... fender to fender traffic.

Does Your Hometown Have "Issues?"

[By Crabby]

Doctor, Sometimes I Just Feel So... Dirty!
(Photo credit: Spike)

So there's a new book out called "Who's Your City," which is about different places to live and the people who choose to live in them. And guess what? It's written by a guy named Richard Florida. It would be even cuter if he lived there!

I haven't read the book, but the Boston Globe did a thing on it, and it looks pretty cool. For instance, it has tips about finding the best place to live given your life stage and personality and goals and such.

(Psssst: wanna make some money in real estate? The author went on Stephen Colbert and they both agreed: just follow the gay people around. And hint: they all just moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts!) OK, maybe not every single one.

P-Town: Probably Still A Safe Investment

(Photo: Beach Comber)

Anyway, this whole concept of personality and place intrigues me. I'm one of those people who's totally opinionated about good places to live. Theoretically, I know it's all subjective, but in my heart of hearts I truly believe that the places I like are the "best."

People who live elsewhere must therefore either be: (a) unfortunate; (b) complacent; or (c) just plain crazy.

But come to find out, other people with different goals and personalities really do have perfectly legitimate reasons to live where they do. Even if it's somewhere I would hate to live!

Harummph! How is this possible?

So Florida (the guy, not the state) took a look at the way different personality types tend to cluster in different places. Not just in trendy neighborhoods, but in huge swaths of the United States and the world. And he found out some interesting things.

For example, check this out:

(Note: If you can't see it very well, you can go here instead--it's the "personality map").



Isn't it cute how the "agreeable people" all got together and decided to form a picture of a duck?

And isn't it sad that apparently a big part of the country forgot to have any personality at all? Whoops!

I was relieved to find out that I've entirely avoided living places where the "extroverted" and "conscientious" gather. Instead, I've been drawn to locations where the "open-to-experience" and "neurotic" folks hang out. Exactly on target!

Sorry Extroverts! You'll Just Have to Amuse Yourselves Without Me.
(Photo by adwriter)

So why do people with similar personality traits end up clustering together? According to Florida, one possibility is selective migration. Agreeable and conscientious types do NOT like to move, and the extroverts and open to experience people do, so people start sorting themselves into similar personality types.

Sure, sounds plausible. Whatever.

To me, as interesting as the big regional variations are, they seem kinda minor compared with the "neighborhood" factors. If you live in a hip urban neighborhood in say, New York--wouldn't you have more in common with people in a hip urban neighborhood in San Francisco or Chicago or even Paris? Instead of, say, other Northeastern folks who live in gated suburban communities or retirement homes or housing projects or farm towns?

The Sushi Place? No Problem. Make a Right at the Church,

Then Straight Ahead for About 300 Miles. Can't Miss It.
(Photo by docman)

I would tend to agree with the author that the place you live has a huge impact on your life. It can affect your employment options, the kind of people you'll meet, and even your opportunity to exercise and find healthy things to eat. (This is, after all, a health blog so it seemed wise to work in something about health. And hey, Cranky Fitness did actually do a post once on the importance of walkable neighborhoods).

Yet it seems like a lot of people just stay where they were born, or end up somewhere sort of arbitrarily and get trapped there, without ever really choosing.

How about you folks, do you like where you live? Does it suit your goals and personality? Did you choose it, or get stuck with it?

Walkable Neighborhoods: Yes, Please!

A recent study conducted in Atlanta looked at obesity in folks living in walkable versus car-dependent neighborhoods. And, not surprisingly, came to the conclusion that walkable neighborhoods are great and we should have more of them! However, the findings were pretty interesting, a bit disconcerting, and make an excellent excuse for bullet points. Bullet points are cool! We'll get to those in a minute.

The study, by Lawrence Douglas Frank, will be published eventually in the journal Social Science and Medicine. But unfortunately, figuring out how to link to the abstract without understanding what "DOI" means turned out to ridiculously complicated! So sorry 'bout that: technical difficulties (otherwise known as "cluelessness") prevented putting a handy link here.

Anyway, the study tried to remove the effects of self-selection of neighborhoods when comparing obesity rates--which seems like a smart idea. Fitness Freaks may choose walkable neighborhoods more often, so we can't be giving their neighborhoods sole credit for their trim waists and muscular calves if they came fully equipped with these features already.

So now, on with the bullet points!

• A significant number of people are “mismatched” and do not live in their preferred type of neighborhood.
• Those who wanted to live in a walkable neighborhood and actually did so walked the most, (33.9% walked). They drove 25.8 miles per day on average.
• Those who preferred car dependent neighborhoods and lived in one of them walked the least. (3.3%). They also drove the most: 43 miles per day.
• Those who didn't prefer a walkable environment walked very little. They showed no change in obesity rates regardless of where they lived.
• Obesity rates were about half as high (11.7%) among those who preferred and lived in walkable neighborhoods compared to those who preferred car dependent 'hoods (21.6%).

"The bottom line is the built environment really does matter to health," concluded the study's author.

Well, kind of. If you're one of those 23% of people who wants to live in a walkable neighborhood and doesn't. The rest of folks either already live in a walkable neighborhood or don't give a rat's ass how many trails or sidewalks or nearby shops and restaurants there are. They'll take the freakin car. Or bus. Or they'll order in.

This study actually seemed pretty depressing, at least for a firm believer in trying to turn unwalkable neighborhoods into walkable ones. It seems as though not only do we need to build the sidewalks, we need to confiscate all the cars too! (Note: not a serious suggestion; car-lovers, do not be alarmed).

There are of course lots of barriers to choosing a walkable neighborhood to live in--expense and quality of schools and location of workplace being big ones. Some people clearly have little choice.

But is it too annoying to point out that some people do? That "where you live" is not always just a given that you have to accept and can't control?

Some folks who could afford a modest sized place in a walkable area will choose instead to live in a much bigger house further away from everything, where they have a hideous commute, no sidewalks or bike trails, and no option but to drive everywhere. Is it possible that families who have do more options might start considering shifting their priorities a bit?

Because until the demand is there, developers and urban planners probably aren't going to bust their butts trying to create cool walkable neighborhoods. We're going to have to be clamoring for them. And it it looks like so far, we're just not clamoring loud enough.

How about you folks--do you live somewhere you can get out and walk when you want to? How big a priority is that for you when you hunt for a place to live? And did you have much choice about where you ended up?