I'm a writer, which immediately qualifies me as the most sedentary of schleppers. Six years ago my lack of mobility, love of food and thickening waistline earned me a diagnosis of diabetes, the American Lifestyle Disease. Having two adult onset diabetic parents with failing health and a grandmother who died of the disease, I could hardly claim ignorance about the longterm consequences of the disease. I took a contrarian view. I took my diagnosis as a wakeup call and thus my goal with the help of a good doc, was to create gradual, sustainable and significant change in those aspects of my lifestyle that were and are risk factors. Serious walking began simply as an attempt to fold daily errands, stress reduction and vigorous exercise into my otherwise deskbound day. My Walkable City, Philadelphia, rewarded my efforts and spread its bounty before me.
The recent buzz about urban walkability ratings has jump-started this blogline, which up to now has existed only in my head (and feet). I haven’t figured out how to walk and write at the same time, but I’ve come close.
Nearly every day at 5:00, my eight year old son and I step out our front door and cross two busy streets. We’re off to collect Mom who works at the University of PA, Presbyterian Hospital 2.5 miles from our house. The boy and I both have our MP3 players plugged in and are enjoying our own private soundtracks. Mine has about 2000 songs. I don’t know if I’ll be listening to Leonard Cohen, Arvo Paart or Deep Purple. The random surprise of shuffle selection is the joy of it. Perhaps it fits that I also find the jangling hustle bustle of the city soothing. I’ve plugged in my musician-quality Shure E-4c earbuds, which when properly inserted in the ear canal, immediately knock out about 70% of the ambient noise while allowing me to enjoy the full tonal range of my music without cranking it.
Some folks think I’m irresponsible or shutting myself off from the world, but I’ll tell you it’s bliss. A bus rumbles by and I do hear it, but at quarter strength. Somewhere, a wailing fire engine closes in but I feel none of the instinctual panic you experience in your chest as the decibels build to a throbbing scream in your head. I live in the city. I don’t need any more noise. I have a choice about what goes in my ears, soundwise. It’s incredibly liberating. But this splendid aural isolation comes at a modest cost of increased visual acuity. “Look both ways before you cross the street. Then look again.” Mom said it and well into my second half century, these are good words to live by. The boy and I hold hands and communicate with gestures and hand signals. His stride is two steps to my one, but his pace is flowing and easy, a sort of skipping run. He enjoys this as much as I do. We fall quickly into a rhythm. I shift hands with him, to keep him on “the inside,” my body shielding his from oncoming traffic of any sort.
I share my own, more cautionary version of Mom’s bromide with both my boys. “Assume the people flying past you in their cars are psychos or idiots and can lose control of their cars in a split second. Pay attention and live.” A tad dramatic perhaps, but a little paranoia is healthy when it comes to navigating urban byways.
At this point, if I were just walking for pleasure, I'd have all kinds of choices. I’m on one of dozens of access points to the world's largest urban park. I can travel north or south along the Schuylkill River, a well-used recreational waterscape, where Ben Franklin himself picnicked and frolicked with his lady admirers. I could follow the river away from or directly into the leftbank heart of the city. Or I can climb the hill behind the Art Museum which winds through a Victorian walker's garden with its gazebo and trails, running back up to the museum which occupies the site of the Philadelphia Waterworks, the nation's first urban waterworks, the architectural and scientific marvel and travel destination of the 18th century. Heading west, I then cross the Spring Garden Street bridge, with its commanding northward view of the river, the museum and the waterworks, all which when seen by sunset, recall the colors of Sienna. The southward view is dominated by my favorite view of the Philadelphia skyline.
This may be a bit of hometown hubris, but frankly I'm surprised that Philadelphia ranks lower than New York and San Fran. in walkability. Maybe I and the study's authors have different definitions of walkability. I've been telling people for years that this is the most walkable city in the country and I stand by it. I've visited and walked them all, with the exception of Portland. The reasons for my preference are myriad. First of all, walking for me is a 20-30 mile per week activity. I average about 5 miles per hour. Try maintaining that pace in NYC and not slowing, dodging or colliding with other pedestrians. Hey you, I’m walkin’ here!
Don’t get me wrong. I love New York, love walking in it, eating in it, doing business or just having fun in it. New York is many bigger and better things, but more walkable than Philadelphia, it is not. To me, it boils down to modulation. New York’s skyline is so straight up and down, so constricted that even the parks and open spaces feel hemmed in. Not so here. Here the skyline offers, well, sky, room to breathe. Here a building can be appreciated, in context, like Cesar Pelli’s changeable magnificent Cira Center which maintains a dynamic ever-shifting dialogue with earth and sky. In New York it would be compressed into the same space with a dozen other buildings, all just as magnificent perhaps, but battling each other for eye-space, lost to their own scale. Here Cira and I have room to breath, to interact. So I greet it every day. It talks back to me. I feel we have a relationship.
Like many walkable urban neighborhoods, there are dozens of charming restaurants and shops less than mile from my doorstep. But here, Billy Penn’s rigorous, revolutionary gridwork of streets means that even the first time (walking) visitor stands little chance of getting lost. Several dramatic diagonal avenues, former farmer’s market pikes, radiate into or out of the city, (depending on your perspective), the most notable of these is the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, which in a few years, will, I predict, come to resemble Barcelona’s Las Ramblas in scale, grandeur and pedestrian amenities. Though its lights aren’t the most pedestrian-friendly, the BFP makes City Hall an easy 20 minute destination from my home in Fairmount. Philadelphia’s terrain is neither completely flat like Chi town’s, yet not so demanding that one needs bionic calves to handle the ascensions and declensions of say San Fran.
Not that my calves can’t handle the Golden City, thank you, it’s just that again, maintaining a sustainable pace is critical to my definition of walkability and walking as exercise. So is the aesthetic experience of it, the sense of variable, visual modulation, the confluence of greenery, open sky, open ground, dramatic vistas, urban structures and urban cultural amenities. In addition, Philadelphia has what few other of America's most walkable cities have and that is arguably the most extensive historical pedigree in the country, little gems of which constantly reveal themselves with little effort on the part of the observant walker. I imagine a future which I long for, but will probably never see, of walking these fair streets and byways, unperturbed by the infernal combustion machines that dominate the roads—for now.
Don’t get me wrong. I have a late model Toyota Avalon that I love and maintain like some guys pamper their sportier rides. I’ve put all of 10,000 miles on a year on it. I have already, by lifestyle and preference, reduced my “carbon footprint.” My only problem is when I have to suck in some of yours.
On the Spring Garden Street Bridge, we hold our breath to inhale a bit less of the blue gray sulfurous spew coming from a particularly noxious SUV with a failing transmission. Will the vehicle even make its destination? Do I know something that the driver doesn’t?
Perhaps not, but I do have a theory. It came to me on the Spring Garden Street Bridge while watching drivers jockeying to make the turn onto the Expressway down ramp. I’ve come to believe that learning to drive a car was the first step to the emotional distancing that allowed Air force pilots to carpet bomb entire villages in Vietnam, then blithely suck down cold beers in Saigon officers’ clubs an hour later. Conversely keeping feet on the street keeps you connected in ways too intimate for some people to handle. The more machine you put between yourself and your own transport, the more distanced you are. The boy and I stand with a commanding view of the Schuylkill Expressway, watching the spasmodic progress of what I call the red snake and its opposing cousin, the white snake. It’s hard to imagine all the individuals in all those cars as singular entities rather than just segments of the snakes.
Imagine all this, without cars, I tell my son. He’s heard it before. The power and the clarity of the idea make us pause. Perhaps it’s just the fumes. I heard today that GM’s quarterly earning statement had plunged. Corporate spokespeople said and I quote, they were “caught offguard by declining sales and Americans’ efforts to conserve fuel by buying smaller and fewer vehicles.” Caught offguard???? It must be a real talent to say something like that and not look incredibly stupid doing so. Then again, I guess if you manufacture Hummers, there’s lot about sustainable transportation choices that will catch you offguard. It’s just like the 70’s, just 30 years later.
BTW, I've been off diabetes meds for over a year and have managed my disease into remission by diet and exercise alone. I've lost 60 pounds and all the aches and pains that I used to get in my knees and legs are gone. I have, in my own opinion at least, America's most walkable city to thank. Sign me, the Philadelphia Walking Man
The recent buzz about urban walkability ratings has jump-started this blogline, which up to now has existed only in my head (and feet). I haven’t figured out how to walk and write at the same time, but I’ve come close.
Nearly every day at 5:00, my eight year old son and I step out our front door and cross two busy streets. We’re off to collect Mom who works at the University of PA, Presbyterian Hospital 2.5 miles from our house. The boy and I both have our MP3 players plugged in and are enjoying our own private soundtracks. Mine has about 2000 songs. I don’t know if I’ll be listening to Leonard Cohen, Arvo Paart or Deep Purple. The random surprise of shuffle selection is the joy of it. Perhaps it fits that I also find the jangling hustle bustle of the city soothing. I’ve plugged in my musician-quality Shure E-4c earbuds, which when properly inserted in the ear canal, immediately knock out about 70% of the ambient noise while allowing me to enjoy the full tonal range of my music without cranking it.
Some folks think I’m irresponsible or shutting myself off from the world, but I’ll tell you it’s bliss. A bus rumbles by and I do hear it, but at quarter strength. Somewhere, a wailing fire engine closes in but I feel none of the instinctual panic you experience in your chest as the decibels build to a throbbing scream in your head. I live in the city. I don’t need any more noise. I have a choice about what goes in my ears, soundwise. It’s incredibly liberating. But this splendid aural isolation comes at a modest cost of increased visual acuity. “Look both ways before you cross the street. Then look again.” Mom said it and well into my second half century, these are good words to live by. The boy and I hold hands and communicate with gestures and hand signals. His stride is two steps to my one, but his pace is flowing and easy, a sort of skipping run. He enjoys this as much as I do. We fall quickly into a rhythm. I shift hands with him, to keep him on “the inside,” my body shielding his from oncoming traffic of any sort.
I share my own, more cautionary version of Mom’s bromide with both my boys. “Assume the people flying past you in their cars are psychos or idiots and can lose control of their cars in a split second. Pay attention and live.” A tad dramatic perhaps, but a little paranoia is healthy when it comes to navigating urban byways.
At this point, if I were just walking for pleasure, I'd have all kinds of choices. I’m on one of dozens of access points to the world's largest urban park. I can travel north or south along the Schuylkill River, a well-used recreational waterscape, where Ben Franklin himself picnicked and frolicked with his lady admirers. I could follow the river away from or directly into the leftbank heart of the city. Or I can climb the hill behind the Art Museum which winds through a Victorian walker's garden with its gazebo and trails, running back up to the museum which occupies the site of the Philadelphia Waterworks, the nation's first urban waterworks, the architectural and scientific marvel and travel destination of the 18th century. Heading west, I then cross the Spring Garden Street bridge, with its commanding northward view of the river, the museum and the waterworks, all which when seen by sunset, recall the colors of Sienna. The southward view is dominated by my favorite view of the Philadelphia skyline.
This may be a bit of hometown hubris, but frankly I'm surprised that Philadelphia ranks lower than New York and San Fran. in walkability. Maybe I and the study's authors have different definitions of walkability. I've been telling people for years that this is the most walkable city in the country and I stand by it. I've visited and walked them all, with the exception of Portland. The reasons for my preference are myriad. First of all, walking for me is a 20-30 mile per week activity. I average about 5 miles per hour. Try maintaining that pace in NYC and not slowing, dodging or colliding with other pedestrians. Hey you, I’m walkin’ here!
Don’t get me wrong. I love New York, love walking in it, eating in it, doing business or just having fun in it. New York is many bigger and better things, but more walkable than Philadelphia, it is not. To me, it boils down to modulation. New York’s skyline is so straight up and down, so constricted that even the parks and open spaces feel hemmed in. Not so here. Here the skyline offers, well, sky, room to breathe. Here a building can be appreciated, in context, like Cesar Pelli’s changeable magnificent Cira Center which maintains a dynamic ever-shifting dialogue with earth and sky. In New York it would be compressed into the same space with a dozen other buildings, all just as magnificent perhaps, but battling each other for eye-space, lost to their own scale. Here Cira and I have room to breath, to interact. So I greet it every day. It talks back to me. I feel we have a relationship.
Like many walkable urban neighborhoods, there are dozens of charming restaurants and shops less than mile from my doorstep. But here, Billy Penn’s rigorous, revolutionary gridwork of streets means that even the first time (walking) visitor stands little chance of getting lost. Several dramatic diagonal avenues, former farmer’s market pikes, radiate into or out of the city, (depending on your perspective), the most notable of these is the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, which in a few years, will, I predict, come to resemble Barcelona’s Las Ramblas in scale, grandeur and pedestrian amenities. Though its lights aren’t the most pedestrian-friendly, the BFP makes City Hall an easy 20 minute destination from my home in Fairmount. Philadelphia’s terrain is neither completely flat like Chi town’s, yet not so demanding that one needs bionic calves to handle the ascensions and declensions of say San Fran.
Not that my calves can’t handle the Golden City, thank you, it’s just that again, maintaining a sustainable pace is critical to my definition of walkability and walking as exercise. So is the aesthetic experience of it, the sense of variable, visual modulation, the confluence of greenery, open sky, open ground, dramatic vistas, urban structures and urban cultural amenities. In addition, Philadelphia has what few other of America's most walkable cities have and that is arguably the most extensive historical pedigree in the country, little gems of which constantly reveal themselves with little effort on the part of the observant walker. I imagine a future which I long for, but will probably never see, of walking these fair streets and byways, unperturbed by the infernal combustion machines that dominate the roads—for now.
Don’t get me wrong. I have a late model Toyota Avalon that I love and maintain like some guys pamper their sportier rides. I’ve put all of 10,000 miles on a year on it. I have already, by lifestyle and preference, reduced my “carbon footprint.” My only problem is when I have to suck in some of yours.
On the Spring Garden Street Bridge, we hold our breath to inhale a bit less of the blue gray sulfurous spew coming from a particularly noxious SUV with a failing transmission. Will the vehicle even make its destination? Do I know something that the driver doesn’t?
Perhaps not, but I do have a theory. It came to me on the Spring Garden Street Bridge while watching drivers jockeying to make the turn onto the Expressway down ramp. I’ve come to believe that learning to drive a car was the first step to the emotional distancing that allowed Air force pilots to carpet bomb entire villages in Vietnam, then blithely suck down cold beers in Saigon officers’ clubs an hour later. Conversely keeping feet on the street keeps you connected in ways too intimate for some people to handle. The more machine you put between yourself and your own transport, the more distanced you are. The boy and I stand with a commanding view of the Schuylkill Expressway, watching the spasmodic progress of what I call the red snake and its opposing cousin, the white snake. It’s hard to imagine all the individuals in all those cars as singular entities rather than just segments of the snakes.
Imagine all this, without cars, I tell my son. He’s heard it before. The power and the clarity of the idea make us pause. Perhaps it’s just the fumes. I heard today that GM’s quarterly earning statement had plunged. Corporate spokespeople said and I quote, they were “caught offguard by declining sales and Americans’ efforts to conserve fuel by buying smaller and fewer vehicles.” Caught offguard???? It must be a real talent to say something like that and not look incredibly stupid doing so. Then again, I guess if you manufacture Hummers, there’s lot about sustainable transportation choices that will catch you offguard. It’s just like the 70’s, just 30 years later.
BTW, I've been off diabetes meds for over a year and have managed my disease into remission by diet and exercise alone. I've lost 60 pounds and all the aches and pains that I used to get in my knees and legs are gone. I have, in my own opinion at least, America's most walkable city to thank. Sign me, the Philadelphia Walking Man
