Since the dawn of time, walking has been an essential and integral part of everyday living for humans. Without the ability to walk, meant you lacked the skills to survive independently. Nowadays, the ability to walk isn’t used as frequently with the evolution of technology and the introduction of mass transit and vehicles. The start of focusing on structuring more modern societies and technological advances have separated our distance between walking and surviving. We, as humans have evolved from living in villages and hunting for food to living in cities and working in offices. It is evident that the evolution of our societal structure and the implementations of environmental design has affected our walkability. We now rely less on walking because there are faster and more accessible means of transportation.
As a society, we have stopped relying on our primal instincts and have grew into more intellectual beings. We have gone from hunters and gatherers to living in cities and taking the subway to work or school. We have grown so much and are discovering new ideas or inventions every day. According to J Michael Oakes, who is a professor at the University of Minnesota, believes that the key environment factors that affect walking are: density, street pattern or connectivity, mixed land uses or the presence of destinations, and pedestrian infrastructure and design related to the issues of comfort, safety, and interest. I also agree with Oakes’ claim that these factors do play a role in walkability.
The creation of mass transportation such as trains or buses have played a huge role in affecting walkability in the last couple of centuries. The idea that going to a location to another location would take couple of hours to get to can be shortened by more than half the time is amazing. Obviously, this will affect how people live their lives. For example, in New York City, mass transportation has become a daily part of living. People depend on the public transportation to get to places. Without public transit, many people would not be able to go to their job, school, or a friend’s place. Public transit has made it so much easier for people to get to places and connects the boroughs together. If I wanted to go to school from my home, it would take me approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes, but if I take the subway, it will take me 40 minutes. This does come at a price however, and not talking about the MTA fee but you miss out on looking at things. Meaning you’re stuck inside a subway train with nothing to look at besides the advertisements on the walls or the lights when you look out the window that you pass by every couple of seconds; it is very repetitive and you don’t get to see sights compared to walking. Mass transportation also affects the way people interact. As a person who resides in New York City, mass transportation, like the subway is viewed to get to a place quickly, from point A to point B. There is no need to talk to strangers and interact with them. You don’t need to make any eye contact and have an awkward moment where both of you are looking at each other. Usually to prevent this, people listen to music or sleep on their trip to their destination. There is no connection between people who are literally close to each other, in a physical sense. I sometimes see the same people daily on my way to school in the same station or subway train but never have any interactions with them. Compared to a different place that doesn’t rely on public transportation like rural areas; it is more common for people who see each other almost every day to have some form of interaction even if it’s a brief discussion or a simple hello.
Speaking of New York City, cities that have developed over the years can also affect the walkability. For instance, Manhattan is a grid, where the streets increase/decrease vertically and avenues ascend/descend horizontally. So, it is very easy to walk through and not get lost, because you can simply look at street signs and know the general direction you need to walk towards. Additionally, the streets of Manhattan are almost always populated, living up to the name of the city that never sleeps, and that does play a role in walkability. In “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” by Jane Jacobs, she writes “To keep the city safe is a fundamental task of a city’s streets and its sidewalks.” Jacobs is trying to convey to keep the city feeling safe for its residents, the streets should have others who are there. They don’t need to be doing anything actively to protect others, they just need to be present and work like “eyes” to be mindful and that will cause the city to be safe. This is relatable with Manhattan because like mentioned above, Manhattan’s streets are usually never left alone, especially in the Lower Manhattan. People who have work, live there, or just simply walking will always be present in all times of the day. And according the Jan Jacobs, that will result in the environment being safer. From my weekly walks that I have had to do for the assignments, whenever I did walk around in Manhattan, the most obvious observations were the buildings and the amount of people walking in the streets. A large number of those people were on their way to work and were just mere afterimages. During my time in Manhattan, for high school and college, I didn’t not ever feel safe or protected; there were always people around me and I was never alone. You don’t really hear about crimes being committed in Manhattan since it’s populated with civilians and police.
