> Is taking walks maybe an uncommon thing in the USA?
I once got sent to Plano, Texas, for a week. It was a training course for work. After the course, I went for walks in the afternoon / early evening. And it surprised me at just how deserted the streets felt. There were plenty of cars around, but so very few pedestrians. I didn't really feel unsafe, just more out of place.
A friend of mine who worked on a plant site in Alabama for a couple of months told me he would get weird stares from the locals when he was going for runs in the morning/evening.
I never knew whether to believe him, but everything in this thread seems to underpin his story.
In American articles, pro environment types sometimes mock how Americans will drive to the gym, drive home to get ready for work, then drive to work creating extreme time stress. The punchline is usually to the effect of "Why not just bike to work? It would be cheaper, take less time and be better for the environment."
One justification for going to the gym is the poor outdoor air quality in some places. It seems list on a lot of people that driving everywhere is a cause of poor air quality.
In the years I have lived without a car, my example of walking everywhere has tended to popularize walking wherever I lived. (Yes, even when I was homeless.) After seeing an uptick in walking, you could see visible evidence of improved air quality, such as healthier plant life in the area.
Crime also went down. In the apartment complex where I gave up my car, the cops stopped staking out the entrance on weekend evenings. In another city, helicopter manhunts and similar police activity trended down.
> In the years I have lived without a car, my example of walking everywhere has tended to popularize walking wherever I lived. (Yes, even when I was homeless.) After seeing an uptick in walking, you could see visible evidence of improved air quality, such as healthier plant life in the area.
> Crime also went down. In the apartment complex where I gave up my car, the cops stopped staking out the entrance on weekend evenings. In another city, helicopter manhunts and similar police activity trended down.
This is a pretty fantastic, and frankly unbelievable claim.
Perhaps you aren't familiar with Jane Jacobs' work. Her position was that eyes on the street was the key to safety in urban areas. This is that mechanism in action.
> Her position was that eyes on the street was the key to safety in urban areas.
I'm sure that's true. However, the unbelievable part was the influence you ascribe to yourself. I do not believe that you, personally, set in motion a chain of events "wherever [you] live" that "lowers crime" and causes "healthier plant life."
I read 'Notes from a Big Country' by Bill Bryson during my second visit and first road trip in America as a child.
I could entirely believe what he wrote on this topic, which fortunately is extracted here [1]. We covered a huge distance, so understandably my dad didn't really want to drive any further once we had arrived at each day's motel. However, there was rarely any alternative.
There were a couple of occasions where American tourists were part-impressed, part-worried to see children walking. (There's a well-known metamorphosis stage in American teenagers; at 15 they grow legs ready for learning to drive.)
I once got sent to Plano, Texas, for a week. It was a training course for work. After the course, I went for walks in the afternoon / early evening. And it surprised me at just how deserted the streets felt. There were plenty of cars around, but so very few pedestrians. I didn't really feel unsafe, just more out of place.