By Zander Sherry
Uninteresting streets, dangerous intersections and a city surrounded by asphalt—as a pedestrian in the US, it can often feel like the world was not built for your convenience.
Many look at cars as their only means of transportation, and since the 1950s, many have lived and worked in separate environments only commutable by cars, through the roads and highways that extend through every state in the US. The automobile has been a symbol of freedom in the 20th and 21st centuries since its integration into mainstream consumer society.
Local governments often aim to connect their cities into the vast amounts of highways across the US, and the car-centered infrastructure has taken hold of most investments into mobility and transportation. Cities fund their roads, parking lots and zoning codes with little to no interest in the goals of the pedestrian.
The result: cities built for cars and not for people.
The goals of city planners will depend on the population size of a given region, but what makes city planning good or bad? With the goals of pedestrians in mind, people continuously propose to have new parks and recreational areas. Recreational land use is a good thing to pursue, but a more immediate concern is the walkability of our streets and roads.
Car-centered cities
Bad urban planning can be seen with the sidewalks that make up the pedestrian experience. Sidewalks interrupted by entrances to vacant parking lots. Private developers have the right to build on their zones as they wish, often prioritizing access not to walking people, but to roads of traffic.
Zoning codes take over urban areas, separating housing and commercial spaces. This leads to a longer average commute to work, congesting traffic and filling potential space with parking lots. Any pedestrian who wants to spend their time off work recreationally in a city center or plaza is left with an unattractive industrial landscape, and not much to do.
It’s hard to live in America without a car. Unlike cities like New York, Chicago or Boston, where car ownership is not a requirement to get around public and private life, several cities in the US, particularly in the west, do not have their areas of consumer and public benefit in close proximity, and it’s difficult to get to your nearest strip mall or movie theater without driving through suburbia and getting on the freeway.
With unstable gas prices, the necessity of owning a car can also put a financial burden on many. Not only this, but the dangers of driving prove themselves and only worsen when cities develop plans for highway construction, adding new lanes to existing roads or creating new ones. Sharing the road with 7 lanes creates a rushed and unsafe feeling that changes people’s daily routine. In this way, economic and transportation infrastructure changes social infrastructure. This all adds up to an unwelcoming experience for the pedestrian.
Walkable cities
We can see the benefits to a more walkable city with existing ones already, where cars are not the primary method of transportation. In New York, shopping centers, restaurants, and local businesses are all walking distance and are connected by miles of bike lanes that weave through the city. Other cities with a higher percentage of bicycle commuters are Portland, Oregon and Minneapolis, Minnesota, both of which have city planners that accommodate the needs of bicyclists.
In addition to more modern infrastructures with designs laid out for commuters on bike and foot, the older cities on the east coast have historical relevance to their city designs, as well as the beautiful European narrow streets that we read about in travel guides.
These streets offer more lively paths and interactions, as their cities were designed for people, and, when they were built, mixed-use zoning ensured that everything was walking distance. Walking down the street, you’re surrounded by businesses and people, rather than asphalt, suburbia or corporations that take part in unnecessary zoning. Cars were simply not in the picture.
Other methods of transportation
Other than walking, biking has shown to be a powerful alternative to commuting to work by means of car. Bicycle commuters praise the benefits it can have on mental, physical health and the environment, and the popularity has only risen. The New York Times found that the sale of e-bikes more than doubled in the US since the pandemic.
This popularity has the ability to transform a city’s general attitude towards bikers. Safety for biking pedestrians is one of the concerns when it comes to a city’s transportation infrastructure, and greater presence of bikers in a city can urge city councils to invest more into their cycling paths and safety measures. As seen with Copenhagen, Denmark’s biking population, the city’s investments over the last two decades worked to increase the sense of safety among cycling pedestrians.
Public transit refers to the buses and trains that a city can use to improve the mobility of its residents. While cars are meant for places with populations low enough that public transportation would be too inefficient, many cities don’t reform their public transportation enough or make it desirable enough to outweigh the effects that driving alone has on the environment.
Commuting from the suburbs in America has changed the history of public transportation, and while we spend more money on it than several European countries, we don’t see the same benefits everywhere in the US. Public transportation has become a somewhat politicized idea, but we would all benefit from fast and reliable trains and buses.
The environmental impact of cars has proved to be one of the biggest issues of the environment, with noise and atmospheric pollution coming from the emissions of millions of car owners in the US driving daily. Cars are the biggest contributor to the greenhouse effect, so while carpooling and rideshares can lessen the emissions of CO2 from cars, accomodating the needs of alternative methods of transportation are ultimately a better solution.
Making our streets more suitable for pedestrians and reforming the buildings and roads in our cities, instead of building new ones, can contribute to more walkable communities and a better attitude towards pedestrians.
