The Sunday N.Y. Times is one of my “windows on the world.” Harper’s Magazine is another. I also listen to what people talk about. And friends send articles over the Internet when they think I’d be interested. Somehow, I manage to stay in touch, but I do miss a few things.
I tune out the vast majority of our multimedia overload because I think it contributes to the country’s general state of insanity and because the vast majority of it is utterly worthless.
This past Sunday, the N.Y. Times Magazine had a theme, “The Next City,” i.e. how cities are evolving. Anything that suggests we’re evolving out of our present longstanding morass (conservative-induced) is welcome. We have a long, long way to go, and we’ve dawdled far, far too long. Dangerously long.
The magazine has a Q&A page each week with consistently fascinating people, and I’ve become a fan of interviewer Deborah Solomon (she asks good questions). This past Sunday, her interviewee was Enrique Penalosa, the former mayor of Bogota, Colombia, who established an international reputation for enlightened city planning.
I had, of course, never heard of Enrique Penalosa, which is one of the reasons I like to read the N.Y. Times. One of his best answers began with the statement: “If democracy is to prevail, public good must prevail over private interests.” That should be plastered on billboards along our highways. It should also be placed in the mailbox of every home or apartment surrounding the high school. Many of those residents have fought fiercely so their private interests will prevail over the public good.
Penalosa is a strong proponent of sidewalks. “In developing-world cities, the majority of people don’t have cars, so I will say, when you construct a good sidewalk, you are constructing democracy. A sidewalk is a symbol of equality.”
He points out that many American suburbs have no sidewalks, “which is a very bad sign of a lack of respect for human dignity.”
Oak Park and River Forest, it should be noted, are suburbs with excellent sidewalk systems. I use them regularly and agree wholeheartedly with Penalosa. I’ve also long held that a clear indicator of the health of any community is how much people use their front porches. But that’s another story.
Americans need to walk more. It’s good for our personal health (an antidote to the “obesity crisis”) and our planet’s health (an antidote to the global warming crisis). The less we use our cars, the better off we are on many fronts. In fact, if you want to be a revolutionary, walk more and watch a lot less TV. Those are the two best things we can do to change a society that is terminally ill.
Biking is good, too, but walking is better. It slows us down, allows us to look around and savor where we are. For awhile, it seemed the only people sharing the sidewalk with me were attached to dogs or jogging with headphones in their ears or gazing up at Frank Lloyd Wright homes. Made me wonder if we had become so totally insular and removed from external reality that the only time we encountered the outdoors was walking to and from the car.
But now I see more walkers. Maybe it’s the escalating price of gas. Back in the ’70s, conservatives wanted to tear Jimmy Carter limb from limb largely because he had “allowed” gas prices to rise above one dollar. Since Numnuts became president, gas has risen more than two dollars per gallon, but you hear nary a peep from double-standard conservatives.
Rising gas prices are a burden, especially for the poor, but there’s a silver lining. It may finally force us to change our unhealthy lifestyles. It may finally force us out onto the sidewalks.
Oak Park and River Forest are great places to walk. We live in beautiful towns, but when you walk, you also, inevitably, bump into your fellow citizens. I just got back from an afternoon walk and ran into Bill Dring and Harry Parker, pastor of First Baptist Church. Good people. Encountering good people is good for the soul–and interacting is good for the community fabric.
We’re very lucky to have such good sidewalks. We should use them more.