Intro

The purpose of this blog is to put down my thoughts as they run along. I am a teacher and a closet environmentalist and the basic content of this blog will be focused on those two topics with the majority of my dribble being -- I suspect -- on how I envision a shifting world.

I believe the world is always changing, and I believe the environment is in constant flux. However, we need to take responsibility for what the world is becoming and learn how to work toward a "better" existence. I tend to see the environment, education, community, politics, and a thousand other topics as necessarily intertwined. If we fail in raising ourselves into a citizenry capable of running a peaceful democracy then we will have failed in the great american experiment.

Today:

I have this crazy notion that neighborhood running could save the planet . . . well maybe that's a gross exaggeration, but I suspect that walking, bicycling, running, and generally being out in the world can help create healthy neighborhoods. We need to see our fellow humans. The world is way different from our childhood, but it still exists. We can see our community and function within our community by simply being a part of it from time to time. In my rather self obsessed world this has involved occasionally trying to jog "locally" from place to place and see what is going on around me. Too often even our social existence takes place in the relative isolation of our offices, our stores, and perhaps most significantly our automobiles. We fly by our neighbors on our way to somewhere else, and generally miss the good and the bad happening around us. Instead of smelling the roses, we are driving past them at who knows how many miles an hour then sitting completely still in front of the television that almost never tells us what is really happening outside our door. In somekinda crazy world that I'm imagining, people would come first. Human beings would have the right of way over cars -- no I don't mean to incite radical jaywalking. Instead, I am trying to explain a concept that has been rolling around in my mind about making sure that thoroughfares don't prevent foot-bicycle travel or cut neighborhoods off from one another. Roads need to be designed in such a way as to allow for long distance travel without disturbing or reducing opportunities for local foot travel. We can see examples of this realization in communities throughout the world, but I imagine cities being designed in such a way as to actively encourage outdoor activity and to help foster community through their very design rather than having these notions plugged in at the end as side notes. We are a world apart from the one our parents and grandparents lived in: we live in virtual worlds, we move from job to job, from hometown to hometown and often from one country to another and back again. Perhaps our ties to the local community where we live TODAY do not run as deep as previous generations (more likely they are simply different kinds of ties) but in either case the differences surrounding us make it more important than ever to enhance our experience of life. We need to make our cities livable.

Specific Example:

Salt Lake City: 700 East between 900 and 1300 South is an excellent example of a road that needs to be reshaped to enhance local community experiences rather than cause divisions and obstacles to existence outside of those felt in cars driving somewhere else. There have been improvements in recent years including bike lanes running both east-west and north-south; however, this particular street still works as a divide in part because of its size and in part because of the dramatic lack of safe crossing areas. There should be pedestrian crossing areas that move with fluidity and that perhaps even include engineering changes such as pedestrian bridges/tunnels. In particular I have often thought that the city has made a mistake in not connecting one of its treasures, Liberty Park, with a smaller park on the other side of the street (running just east of 700 East to the south of 1300 South). A bridge could directly connect the two parks and the overall park experience could be enhanced with the continuation of the cedar path in the smaller park making a second loop for people using Liberty Park as a place to engage in activities such as walking and running. The idea is not original -- it is in fact based on a number of parks in Paris that have used a variety of tricks to create larger open spaces than those existing within the "natural" confines of the city. I believe connecting these two parks in Salt Lake City would create a sense of enhanced urban open space and ideally increase the overall Salt Lake urban experience by enabling the park(s) to in fact become a keystone to connecting/bridging communities that are sometimes otherwise separated.