Walkaholics Unite!

What a lovely article Jennifer Vogel wrote about walking in dear old Minneapolis. I’m a complete walking geek myself–walking to work and many other places because I choose to. It grows from a love of the city (whatever that city may be–Seattle now, or Shanghai, Hanoi, and or wherever I’ve lived) and what I can learn from being in it. When I was living in Minneapolis a few years ago, I attended one meeting on precisely the Block E issue; it was a meeting filled with hopeful citizens looking to voice their opinions on that awful, dispiriting building. The meeting was advertised as such an opportunity, yet its facilitator would have none of it and gave no time (what interests were behind this of course I have no idea) for anyone to say a word. That would have to come at another meeting. She presented a picture-perfect, stern, unimaginative, policy-wonk demeanor to those of us with the naive notion that we might have something important to say. It was a fascinating little game to watch the city keep the voices of people at bay, and these were not your problematic minorities and others that Minneapolitans so struggle to come to terms with. It is a very sad thing for a city that does, as you point out, have so much going for it. I was visiting family a few weeks ago and was lamenting that even for a city bent on car myopia, the actual aesthetic experience of driving is much worse than many places I’ve been–no trees or landscaping along much of the freeway system. This too was not always the case, as my mother comments wistfully about the old Highway 100 when it was originally built with lovely elms and lilacs for miles. I’ve come to the conclusion that it comes down to insecurity, and much of that having something to do with masculinity (men must command space, not walk through it) and class (which is obvious, I think). Such problems are very alive in this more vibrant Seattle, as I must justify my eccentric walking ways to friends and colleagues virtually every week. I’m an urban geographer who does work in China and it is there as well that I have had numerous bewildering conversations trying to convince people that professionals in the United States sometimes walk or bicycle to work. Somehow, some way, we must find a way to alter this vision of car driving as the only properly imagined life and I appreciate your attempt to make an alternative seem at least possible.

Brian Hammer
Seattle, WA