Walkable Cities Are Better Cities

We can have nice things

One of my favorite visual storytellers online recently posted a picture of the Strøget, the main pedestrianized thoroughfare in Copenhagen.

I wrote last summer that I not only loved this place, but found lovely and lively versions of such thoroughfares in a smaller city of 350,000, towns of 50,000 and 25,000, and even an island village with fewer than 1000 souls.

Americans often spend big bucks on taking trips to such places. But when faced with the possibility of similar developments at home, all kinds of harrumphing starts happening. I’ve heard from countless people (none of them planners) various versions of waiving this off with “American cities were built after the car, unlike European cities,” or “you have to have transit everywhere to do this” or something smart sounding but totally uninformed to that effect.

(God grant me the confidence of a person talking about city planning while having absolutely no serious understanding of city planning!)

Just to be clear, the centers of many North American cities were built or platted before the car, so the notion that we are somehow unable to fix this is just plain wrong. And European car dependence once was much closer to mirroring American trends, until the Europeans stopped deciding to pay attention to silly objections like the ones above and started improving their communities.

And no, on the little island in Denmark, there wasn’t frequent transit, super-dense housing, or a lack of car dependence! And in fact, there wasn’t a lot of transit in the small town either (though it was certainly better than an American suburb). You can do this here; we just choose not to.

It’s not as Danish the citizens were especially enlightened and all ready to embrace this in the 1960s either. The fancy stores were extra opposed and city leaders even faced death threats!

Of course, it was much ado about nothing, and now Copenhagen is one of the safest places to go on foot, and one of the best places to be outside in a city, or shop in a city, in the world.

That was over 60 years ago.

I get that many of the people in charge around here are never going to lead us forward on anything of substance. But perhaps they could consider that after six decades of sitting on our hands, they might consider starting to take some steps to follow behind.