Problems plaguing either very old or very new neighborhoods, like heaving side- walks and signs placed right in the middle of a wheelchair or stroller route, are easier to x than some of the odder infrastructure embedded in Denver’s midcentury neighborhoods. Sidewalk maintenance and repair are only two of the challenges faced by a community interested in promoting walkability. Forget a wheelchair or walker that was impossible. ![]() There were long stretches where even desire lines (natural paths created by erosion from foot traffic) were absent and I was shoved onto the busy road, wondering how a person with even moderately impaired mobility, or vision or hearing, could safely get from here to there on foot. ![]() The route that Google Maps gave me was a mostly straight shot down East 13th Avenue through the full spectrum of Denver’s sidewalks, pseudo-sidewalks, and utter lack of sidewalks. On a Tuesday morning, after walking about an hour from my hotel in search of hot coffee and something to eat, I set out to tramp six miles from Aurora to downtown Denver, where I was meeting with Paul Kashmann, the city councilman who chaired the mayor’s sidewalks working group aimed at identifying the problems and roadblocks that prevented Denver from being a completely walking-friendly city.ĭepending on your pace, it takes nearly three hours to walk from where I was in Aurora to the City and County Building in downtown Denver. I went to Denver to find how at least one lesser-discussed city was reshaping itself around the pedestrian. A slow, step-by-step comeback, as might be expected of such an endeavor, but with the strength one would also expect of a movement seeking to reclaim our free-striding bodies’ rights to our public spaces. From health initiatives like the Walk with a Doc program to the surprising removals of Futurama-inspired freeways in cities like Dallas, Texas, and Rochester, New York, to Atlanta’s one- billion-dollar commitment to walking and biking infrastructure over 25 years, walking is making a comeback. Yet all over the United States, towns and cities are quietly regaining their right to walk. It’s so easy to turn to New York City and its fellow high-profile cities and ignore the rest of the country, the rest of the world. ![]() Sometimes they’d bring up Chicago, every now and then Boston. “What about New York?” people invariably asked me when I talked about the lack of walkability in the United States. I went to Denver partly because all the books I’d read about walking tended to orbit around either these world-renowned cities or hiking and mountain climbing. I’ve walked for days, even months and years, in Boston, New York City, London, Paris, Moscow, Vienna, Rome, Sydney-all beautiful, unique cities with varying grades of walkability.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |