MyWHaT

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Strong Towns BLOG has received a lot of attention on MyWHaT of late. Today’s post is a rift by guest writer Henry Morgenstein after he discovered a perusal of their site-as usual, it’s provocative.  Tomorrow next week,  I’ll have my rift off of their recent Starter Strategies for a Strong Town post-my attempt to look at some economics.

“The Way You Get Around Determines How You Live.”

by Henry Morgenstein

I was just reading a blog called Strong Towns. Like everybody else, they are trying desperately to come up with a formula that would make modern towns look like towns used to look like: places full of people, full of local stores. The blog was realistic. It admitted to that we have many benefits now — computers, cheap consumer goods — that we did not have then. The wish for the past was not a stupid wish to be transported to a golden time. We are better off now, but our cities are soulless.

Is there a single solution to our soulless downtowns? Is there a silver bullet, a way of making the downtowns of all cities more vibrant, more alive? In short is there a way of making a social life exist inside cities?

Our urban life does not throw people into the street. It rakes them up, shuts them into office buildings and houses….instead of squares & fields, modern cities devise means to keep crowds moving rather than gathering. Streets work as thoroughfares, channels…social circulation, ventilation, not congregation…Architectural means to disperse, direct crowds.”

That says it all. I have always known that architecture creates the environment we live in, but I never fully realized that our streets are the architecture of our lives. Wide streets, streets devoted to cars, not people, create the life we live. We are dispersed, herded, moved through. Loitering is not encouraged. Stand still or walk slowly & dreamily & you will be dead.

Or, to sum it up, “The way we get around determines how we live.” How we live means how we shop, who we befriend, what we eat. The list is endless. A car culture is radically different from a subway culture.

Conversation Cars on Subways (Sabo/News)

Think of cities that have subways & trolleys. What you see is people on the street, in subway cars. You see crowds, you meet people — some of whom are bound to become your friends — or at the very least acquaintances. One way or another you will get to know them, recognize them.

Think of a car oriented city. People hurtle buy in closed containers. Life on the street is zilch, zero. Life on the street is dangerous, non-existent.

If you want to bring back vibrant downtowns, local shops, street life, you must change the way people get around.

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“The way you get around determines how you live.”

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There is only one way to go back to what we love about the past, towns that are full of people & local stores. That is to change the way we get around — and instead of focusing on banning cars — and we must eventually ban cars — we must first focus on alternative means to get around — busses & trolleys, bicycle pathways & pedestrian paths. If, and only if, there are efficient public ways to get around, can we begin to do what must be done. It’s already beginning to be done. Just today I read that Paris (& many other French cities) are considering banning SUVs. As the article says, “SUVs are not compatible with city life.” Truthfully, cars are not compatible with city life.

We all want city life; we really do. We are sick of our current landscape: deserted city streets because city streets, nowadays, are pieces of the highway. We want towns that are full of people & shops & cinemas & our friends & our neighbors.

What can we focus on to make such cities live again? “The way we get around determines how we live.”

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Comments: we welcome your comments, please don’t be shy. The more questions, perspectives and general participation we have here the better. What’s on your mind?

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following was sent in for posting by Henry after seeing that I was experimenting with car-dependency this week. It’s an older piece of his written in 1995. It’s a bit of caution against pulling a calf muscle while pressing the accelerator–or something like that. 

Thanks Henry. 車不如自行! (Ding! Ding!)

Dr. Pedal and Mr. Drive

by Henry Morgenstein

It was five o’clock at night. I was on my bicycle, on my way to Meijers. I was lost in thought when a car whizzed by me, only inches away. He was doing 40-50-mph. There was no car to his left. He deliberately stayed as close to me as he possibly could. He hated the sight of me–a bicyclist.

He scared me, and suddenly I became the bicycle rider I usually am: aggressive intense. I went into a state called high alert: every fibre of my body was alive, aware, and suddenly I remembered a letter I recently received from my son Ethan. For several years year he did not own a car; he went everywhere by bicycle. But suddenly, because of his jobs, he needed a car. Here is his note to me after just one week of using a car to get around:

What is happening to me? I feel this transformation, a change that I can’t quite control. From the moment I stepped into the thing I was a different man. I feel it inside and outside, through and through, from top to bottom. My body is shrinking. Those legs that used to pedal so hard are now content to just gently press the accelerator. The arms that supported me and guided me now just rest on the steering wheel. Lungs that used to breath deep chests of brisk outdoor air now are now just inhaling filtered, temperature controlled boxed air.

Even my mind changes, my disposition. I was once the man to travelled with fiery eyes and a sharp tongue. I would take my piece of the road with a passion, a force, that could not be broken even by a half a ton of speeding steel. I would shout at any one who dared to invade or threaten. My mind raced and chemicals flowed. Endorphins flowed through me, giving me a high like none other. I thought big thoughts. I contemplated motion and wind and balance. Now, I have settled down. Those chemicals no longer flow. I accept my piece of the road, like the others do. I do not fight for it. When my space is invaded I give a beep and hope that they will give me a few inches. My mind is filled with thoughts of shopping and pointless errands. I contemplate radio stations and dashboard dust. I am passive…

Until once again I decide to jump on my horse and ride out in the wild night air. And all of a sudden he is back. That man of passion and force. The endorphins begin to flow and my mind races. Those old muscles grow back into hulk size and I am my other self. It is then I become aware of the struggle, the two sides fighting for control.

It is then that I see the faces of Dr. Pedal and Mr. Drive.

Dr. Pedal and Mr. Drive: the man of passion and force vs the man who rests on the steering wheel. The man who travels with fiery eyes and a sharp tongue, or the man who contemplates a radio station and dashboard dust. The mode of travel creates the human being, and those who power themselves become different human beings than those whose muscles atrophy because they are being carried along.

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• Photo via Bikes, Bikes & Bikes!

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Comments: we welcome your comments, please don’t be shy. The more questions, perspectives and general participation we have here the better. What’s on your mind?

UPDATE 12:05pm: Due to some formatting glitches, some of the original content of this post will be posted in a follow-up and  a graphic has been moved to the bottom. Henry’s post has otherwise been left unchanged.

Guest writer: Henry Morgenstein. Roundabouts continue to get national attention while locally the debate continues. The author says, “get on with it.”

Traverse City has pondered & pondered, wondered & wondered — said yes, said no, gone on & on. About what? About roundabouts.

What’s a roundabout? A traffic circle, a rotary. You know those things that are all over Europe — and we Americans hate them. When do we get on this spinning carousel? How & where do we get off? We have a tendency to go round & round, as if on a merry-go-round. We Americans hate roundabouts, rotaries, traffic circles. At this point the City of Traverse City is not about to build any roundabouts.

And yet, the city of Carmel, Indiana built sixty of these things since 2001. Sixty roundabouts in 9 years. Why did Carmel, Indiana, which was one of the first cities in America to build traffic lights — and they are now in the process of tearing down many traffic lights in Carmel, Indiana — why did they build so many roundabouts?(PDF)

How About This?

“In revamped intersections there has been an eighty per cent drop in crashes involving injuries.“

Did you hear that? An 80% drop — and those last four words are very significant — in crashes involving injuries. Not fender benders, but those kind of crashes where somebody gets hurt. What was the percentage drop in such crashes? Eighty per cent. Wow! A 30% or 50% drop would be significant. But this is much more significant: this is an eighty per cent drop in crashes involving injuries. Again, Wow!

And here is the second statistic — and all this is from a short article in Newsweek magazine, October 11, 2010, written by Tom Vanderbuilt: “Roundabouts can reduce fatal accidents by as much as 90%.” We thought an 80% drop was significant. What about a 90% drop? “Reduce fatal accidents by as much as 90%.”

Move Forward Traverse City

I should stop repeating myself, yelling figures at you — and Traverse City should get on with it now. If not sixty, we should build at least forty roundabouts in the next ten years. My reasons are simple, I want to live in, and I want friends & family to visit, a city that has reduced car-related injuries by 80 per cent and car-related deaths by 90 per cent.

Simple.

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Related Articles

• You: European Import Has Cars Spinning. Heads, Too. (nytimes.com)
• Roundabouts Reduce Crashes in Indiana (newsweek.com)
• Picture of Muskegon’s Roundabout (Flickr)

Guest writer: Henry Morgenstein

I wrote half of an essay that I was going to post on “MyWHaT” when I was derailed. I was recommending to all of you a very small, very short, book in my library of books on cars & cities, Energy & Equity by Ivan Illich — a man way ahead of his time.

Love it: Speed-Stunned Imagination

How was I derailed, stopped in the middle of the flow of words? I decided to see how much a copy of Energy & Equity would cost all of you. After all, I wanted you to buy it, read it cover to cover. How does $36 dollars a copy sound — or $268 dollars for a hardback copy? I was stunned. It is a slim book, an even-smaller-than-usual paperback. There are perhaps 70 pages of text.

Why does it cost anywhere from $36 dollars to nearly $300 dollars to buy a copy of this small book. Many of you already figured it out.

High price equals Scarcity. That’s right. Eight copies are available on Amazon in the U.S.A. Since I live in two countries, I tried Amazon in England. Unbelievably, two copies were available in England — and the price was five dollars. Five dollars! I could make a killing I tried to buy both copies. After selling me one copy, they said there were no more copies. Sun of a gun. Somebody was buying the other copy just as I was buying my copy.

Where the Energy Is

All that is a side issue. Why is this brilliant book no longer being printed? Why are all of us not able to pick up a cheap copy of Ivan Illich’s book “Energy & Equity” written in 1974?

The United States puts 45 per cent of its total energy into vehicles: to make them, run them and clear a right of way for them when they roll, when they fly and when they park. Most of this energy is to move people who have been strapped into place.”

No one has said it this way. It is how it is said as well as what is said:

Forty five per cent of total energy to make em, to run em, to clear a right of way for ‘em when they roll — and all for people strapped into place. Participatory democracy demands low energy technology and free people must travel the road to productive social relations at the speed of a bicycle.”

Brush Creek Township Election House in Pennsylvania by Padraic.

Democracy and the Bicycle

Again, so well said — and it needs to be said loud & clear 40 years after Ivan Illich first said it:

“True democracy demands low technology, needs social relations to occur at the speed of a bicycle.”

When I am on my bike, people in cars, people on the sidewalk, people on bicycles, all talk to me. No one talks to me when I’m surrounded by two tons of steel — when I am inside a car.

Ivan Illich is a genius. Borrow the book from a library. Almost every page has a gem of an insight said in such a way that you are made to see the situation from a wholly new angle.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Henry loaned me Illich’s book over the weekend. I couldn’t put it down. Re-read pages and plan to read it one more time before I hand it back. Also, the text of Energy and Equity is re-published in entirety online. It inspired a few tweets while I was reading it.

• A healthy society where all are equally encouraged & able to participate without institutional favoritism, travels under 18mph+/- #WhyWeRide
• #TeaParty thought: shouldn’t libertarians all ride bikes? Infrastructure for cars demands an advance level of technocratic gov control.
• #TeaParty thought con’t: more bicyclist & walkers=less government. Where’s the active transportation platform from libertarians?

‘Take the River Back’

Guest Writer: Henry Morgenstein

A few years ago, on a beautiful warm sunny afternoon my wife & I biked to downtown Traverse City. She wanted what she, a Brit, thought was the most wonderful ice cream in America — and it is here, in Traverse City. All of you know the ice cream store I am referring to: it sits in the middle of one of the two streets of our downtown, and along its side is a lovely long narrow passageway that leads to the parking lots behind the stores.

Jay P. Smith Walkway between pizza, ice cream and parking (photo: Gary L Howe)

We wondered where we should go to eat the ice cream and she suggested we go to the Boardman River which is only about 100 feet down the alley. We walked our bikes there & then sat on the brick embankment of the wooden bridge that crosses the Boardman, the bridge that leads to the large parking lot, more specifically, the lot that houses our Saturday & Wednesday Farmer’s Market.

By chance we chose a wonderful spot to sit. We were on a narrow grassy area overlooking the free-flowing Boardman. We watched several ducks, a few were paddling furiously: the current was quite strong that day. My wife remarked on how we were surrounded by lush vegetation, uncared-for, yet flourishing in a very picturesque manner.

If a gardener had been assigned the task of beautifying this spot, he could not have done a better job.

And it was preternaturally quiet. In the past, I’ve gone to sit in the sand at the edge of our bay, and the experience was highly unpleasant: whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. Thousands of cars whiz by. It is not peaceful. It is not pleasant.

Where we were sitting was peaceful, quiet, picturesque — and full of parked cars.

The River Walk in San Antonio, TX (photo: mcclouds' photostream)

And then it struck me! For years & years & years there have been discussions about the possibility of creating a pleasant pedestrian experience alongside our beautiful Boardman River, the river that snakes through our downtown. Everybody used to say to me, “Have you ever been to the River Walk in San Antonio, Texas?”

They knew what was beautiful, what was memorable.

But such talk about creating a river walk similar to the one in San Antonio was always squashed. We can’t, they said. It’s too expensive, they said and besides, there is so little parking downtown. We need that space for parking for store owners & their employees.

We now have enough parking downtown — in fact, we have a great many unused spaces in our newly built multi-story parking ramp; capacity has not been reached. There is now a BATA Public Transportation Hub in our downtown; employees can be encouraged to use that.

The time is now; the opportunity is available now.

The 200-Block alley design proposed by the Downtown Development Authority is waiting for leadership & political will. (DDA)

Just visualize it with me — in the area behind the stores on Front Street, for two blocks, from Cass Street to Park Street. Many tables are on the pavement, and there are small pushcarts laden with fruits & flowers. Venders will want to be there to sell food, to peddle their wares. Tables will magically appear, tables very similar to the tables that magically appeared in the newly renovated Marina downtown.

People are sitting & snacking at tables that overlook the free-flowing, crystal-clear, lush, green-bottomed, Boardman River. You almost cannot hear the massive number of cars whizzing by on Grandview Parkway. You are not aware of the people on Front Street.

This is tranquility & beauty, the true scene of a small resort town: people outside, eating at tables, strolling by, looking at pushcarts full of inexpensive, regional goods. You walk a few feet further and you are on a wooden walkway that meanders, in peace & quiet, still further along this River that exists in the heart of our town.

If you wanted to, you could cross the busy-with-cars parkway via an underground tunnel at Cass street. You could then go swimming. If you need to buy anything you can walk fifty feet and you are in the heart of Traverse City’s shopping district.

Why can’t we do this? It wouldn’t cost much. We do not need meters and parked cars in what is prime real estate property. Prime property.

Downtown — with a view of the Bay. Overlooking the meandering, lovely, Boardman River.

We give this spot to cars? Are we crazy?

Parked cars have the best of views along the Boardman River in downtown Traverse City: a view of the river, our largest parkland & of course the bay. For what? At most $5 a day? (Photo: Gary L Howe)

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