Once upon a time, there was a sweet little website called biketopiaproject.com. It is no longer there (or rather, an advertisement has gone up in its place – what irony!), so don’t bother checking it out.
It was based upon the premise of creating an actual city that would be a Biketopia (and, by extension I suppose, a Pedtopia) – free from the threats and pollutions (and conveniences) of the personal automobile. Its absence means, I suppose, that the project was abandoned.
It had a great many good essays and articles, as I recall, but I only have a snippet of one essay. They posited:
The automobile is self-necessitating. That is, because everyone has a car, a quarter [at least –Dan] of the land in the city is devoted to streets, freeways, parking lots, garages and filling stations, making the city so big that one needs a car to get around.
Because everyone has a car, mass transit is inadequate, making the use of a car necessary.
Because everyone has a car, the air is polluted, making it healthier to drive a car than to walk or bicycle.
Because everyone has a car, riding a bicycle is a dangerous frightening experience.
I was thinking about this quote the other evening as I walked home through my urban jungle here in Louisville. For those who’ve read here a while, you know I always get to work by bicycle or walking. Here lately (for the last several months), I’ve been almost exclusively walking.
We have had a few robberies/muggings on the streets around my home and I’ve wondered if it would be safer to make sure I leave work early enough to be home before it gets dark. (which would actually mean I have to leave work early, since it gets dark around 5:30 this time of the year).
But it seems to me it’s that same principle of the self-necessitating automobile. If peaceable folk abandon the streets after dark in Louisville for fear of a mugging, then the streets will be less safe to walk (due to less citizen presence), meaning that it’s not a good idea to walk after dark, which means the streets will be more abandoned and less safe, and so on and so on.
But giving up the streets to the cars or the thugs because it’s less safe or less healthy only leads to more of the problem, not less. On the one hand, logic dictates the individual ought to protect him/herself. On the other hand, logic dictates that for individuals to act in their perceived best interests only makes things worse for the individual and the community.
I tend to try to fall on the side of the bigger picture and what’s best for the whole, but when it comes to my children out on those same streets, well, the answers become much grayer.
I was wondering, are there other examples of bad behaviors being self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating? Is this the Way of Bad Policy? Do we have Bad Policy (personal or societal) because it’s perceived to be easier or safer or less threatening, which only leads to more and worse bad policy?
What do you think?
3 comments:
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Great one! Thanks, kmoo.
As a rider of horses who occassionally must ride from 'here' to 'there', I agree with your observations. And the streets are dangerous places for horses.
But, I must not ride my horse across someone's field, for that field 'belongs' to someone who for one reason or another can't have horses riding across grass.
Oh, I feel your pain.
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