| Book Review for Carfree Cities (auth J.H. Crawford) Introduction What was the best city you have ever lived in? I know. I used to live in a town called Wiesbaden, in Germany. Lovely place. Downtown was a short walk away, if you didn?t want to take the bus. Traffic was light, and the streets were quiet, and the overall the place felt quite safe. Then I moved to San Antonio. I had never lived in a major population center (if San Antonio called be called that), so it might be unfair to compare the two urban areas. So what? I?ll do it anyway. San Antonio is big. It is big both in population and in geographic size. According to the 2000 World Almanac, San Antonio has 1,114,130 people living 333 square miles. Naturally, downtown is not a short walk away. I shouldn?t expect it to be. How one gets downtown is also different. Yes, there is bus service from my house to downtown, but only on weekdays, and not on weekends nor on nearly all holidays. Oh yeah, and the bus comes at one hour intervals. Traffic can be light, heavy, or somewhere in between. It really depends on where you are. I do know that traffic is heavier than it used to be, despite freeway construction. As soon as a freeway is finished, it is soon full of cars. I wonder why even bother. I also why San Antonio also ?felt? different. It wasn?t that no one spoke German. It wasn?t that it was just plain hotter, and that it never snows. No. It was something else. Something that gives me great unease to this day. ?There?s not a lot of people there / Just an awful lot of cars...? -- Thomas Dolby (you know, that ?She Blinded Me With Science? guy?) I want you to try something. Try walking to work. Is it more than a mile or so away (I bet it is)? Try bicycling. Is it more than five miles away? Try using your transit system. Unless you live someplace like New York City, or even San Francisco, this might not be very convenient. Perhaps it is impossible. If it was not inconvenient nor impossible, and you actually did walk/bike/other to work, what did you see? The world looks much different. It seemed to me once I arrived in the USA that I stopped walking. I used to walk to school. I still remember how to get there. I didn?t walk to school in the USA. I rode with my mom. We drove to school, to the mall (such a big place to someone used to walkplatzes and market squares!), and to other amusements. We drove everywhere. I, one time, walked home from school, and nearly got lost. I got lost because my old system of getting from place to place was ineffective in the USA. There are no landmarks, really. To get from school to home, I had to know what streets I had to take. Remembering what one house looked like was useless; all the houses looked more or less alike. Obviously, the freedom of movement that I had gained at the age of six was now removed from me. I have not had the sense of freedom that I once had. Apparently, I realized at the age of eight, that freedom of movement was not available until one was at least sixteen. Ah, the price of living safely in a suburban housing complex. Who am I kidding? I hated it. I mean, let?s compare: TV versus going out. Freedom and accessibility at the age of six, or sixteen? A video store not more than two block away, or Blockbuster three miles away? Community play ground in the middle of the apartment complex, or a backyard that only the dog used and yours truly had to mow? |