Why not here?

Street artist scrubs images into the urban landscape

Twenty Seven Thoughts from the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professional Professional Development Seminar

1. We try to make sure every project is a Complete Streets project. 
2. “Great” results from incrementally getting better.
3. We love the Charlotte Department of Transportation.
4. Whenever I run on concrete paths I think the orthopedic surgeons must have an interest in it.
5. Communities decide the uses of a street. 
6. Commerce happens at three miles an hour, not thirty miles an hour.
7. There is flexibility in transportation standards if you ask the right questions.
8. Right-size the streets.
9. This is about creating better communities. 
10. Design the whole street for all users.
11. We should liberate ourselves from conventional road classifications.
12. Communities decide the uses of a street. (See #5)
13. Speed becomes greed when it takes away a child’s ability to choose to walk.
14. Twenty is Plenty for US(A).
15. Lessening the barriers to active living increases individual motivation. 
16. “It’s my street. It’s my park.”
17. We love the 6-Step Process for Creating Successful Complete Streets Projects. (See #3)
18. First step from policy to practice: change procedures.
19. Getting ALL the stakeholders involved in street planning throughout the process  makes good streets.
20. I’m going to invite the right people to the next webinar I participate in.
21. We should ask, “How can we help solve the problem?”
22. Break down the silos.
23. Engage and educate the public, don’t design and defend.
24. Why pilot something that you know works elsewhere?
25. Change the functional classification to lower design speed.
26. The right combination of street classification and design speed makes great streets.
27. Why not here?

Thoughts on September 12, 2011

Ten years ago I started teaching at a new school, one I wasn’t very comfortable in. It was my first public school job, my first in a large school, with a large faculty. On September 11, 2001, I was teaching first period American Lit when we were told to stay put in our classrooms. Someone came in and told us to turn on the tv, which revealed the horror of the day.

One of the World Trade Center towers was on fire, having been hit by a plane about 15 minutes earlier. As I recall, we were all watching when the second plane hit, and the thought that this was an attack became more clear. Classes changed just as news of the Pentagon, some twenty minutes away, came on. I cried as I watched the first tower crumble, with no one around but two other teachers I had essentially just met.

I remember so many details of the day—

I remember crying about the deaths of people I’d never met, thinking that that is the connection others call God.

I remember crossing paths with one of my new students in an empty hallway, and stopping to hug him for a second.

I remember thinking that class should just go on, and that that would be a victory.

I remember asking my students to write about whatever they wanted on a day that writing about whatever we wanted took on new meaning and importance.

 I remember wanting to hold my children more than anything.

I remember learning about the heroism on Flight 93 in Pennsylvania, and, remarking that those guys were me, wondering if I would have had that courage.

I remember helping a woman the next day who had driven her car over the parking stop log, and saying, “They can bomb us, but they can’t keep us from being nice to each other.”

I remember one of the hardest running workouts I’ve ever done, on a beautiful sunny September 12.

I remember feeling more unified as a nation than I had ever felt in my lifetime.

I remember putting a flag on my car, and waving to others who did the same.

It’s that feeling of unity that I want to carry with me. We were all in those towers, in those planes, on those streets, in that Oval Office. A flag that had been the sign of provincial and ugly jingoistic nationalism for me became a symbol of a people, and a way to express our common humanity.

Having been born in the early 60s, my life has taken me through civil rights battles, Viet Nam War protests, Watergate, Reagan’s nuclear madness, a Gulf War, and more tangible divisive political, cultural and economic arguments. This day, though, and for some time afterward, we were focused on one common enemy.

Since that time, though, we’ve seen the eroding of any unified feeling. It happened slowly at first, when W decided to invade Iraq, for example. But it has now degraded to childish obstinacy and intolerance. We can’t see anyone else’s point of view; we can’t compromise for fear of seeming, well, like we’re working together for a cause. We refuse to see that despite our differences in “how,” the “why” of making our country better should bring us together.

So today, what I want to remember is feeling like a part of a nation for the first and only time in my life. I’ll remember that it’s possible, and hope that it doesn’t take another attack to make it happen.

Eleven Thoughts While Riding to Work

1.       Wore a vest this morning on my ride.

2.       There’s always one. Today there were two.

3.       I still haven’t stopped to pick the prickly pears.

4.       I saw three people riding for transportation today, besides me. All of us were men.

5.       How do we let others know we are there?

6.       Would you rather run a hundred yards in high heels, or ten miles in the woods?

7.       When there’s an app for that, what do folks who still use dumb phones do?

8.       My desire to have fenders is in direct inverse proportion to my love for my hot ride.

9.       I’ve ridden almost 2150 miles since February 2010, (almost) all of it for transportation.

10.   I’ve about worn out my handlebar grips.

11.   It’s just more fun to ride my bike.

This Week's Best Reads, 8-26-11

The helmet vs. no-helmet controversy and the effects on bike sharing programs:

 http://www.grist.org/biking/2011-08-22-helmet-laws-get-in-way-of-bike-sharing-programs

Retrofitting the suburbs:  http://www.grist.org/cities/2011-08-22-levitt-to-beaver-suburbia-gets-a-mixed-use-makeover

Michelle Bachmann’s “logic” about $2/per gallon gas http://www.grist.org/list  

Pop-up urbanism: neon bikes in Toronto  http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/08/neon-bicycles-pop-up-toronto.php

Photo: Good

“Depaving,” complete streets and other ideas for cutting infrastructure expenditures from Neal Peirce: http://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/08/22/from-minneapolis-ten-street-design-solutions-to-transform-your-city/ 

The website for “River Time,” a film about my friend John Lane’s paddle to the sea from his backyard in Upstate SC:  http://rivertimefilm.com/   

Fifteen Thoughts While Riding to Work

1.       Why do people complain about traffic safety and drive dangerously at the same time?

2.       If you wave to other active commuters a couple of times, they become your friends.

3.       An 86 year old woman killed in a crosswalk? Really?

4.       Sometimes I wonder why I read these things before I get on my bike.

5.       I’ll say it again (and probably again): Roads are only safe when the users make them that way.

6.       The prickly pears on the beaver tail cacti I pass on the way to work are ripening.

7.       Urban orchards are a cool idea.

8.       Daily watering leads to shallow roots leads to weak grass.

9.       Even without bike lanes and traffic, I bet I win on short trips.

10.   There seems to be more chatter about helmets or no helmets lately.

11.   I wear a helmet for the same reason I wear a seatbelt.

12.   Arguing about helmets seems to avoid the greater issue of safe biking facilities.

13.   I wonder what it would be like to go for a run with Robert Frost.

14.   What kind of running shoes would Wallace Stevens wear? Firecats, of course.

15.   I run far. Other people run farther. This will not change.

Thirteen Thoughts While Riding to Work

1.       Drivers expect us to act like cars, and then get mad at us when we do.

2.       The center line of the traffic light trigger loop is the most sensitive.

3.       What if I left hooked you like you right hooked me?

4.       Riding on the left side of a one-way street is a little disconcerting.

5.       It’s nice to feel a little chilly today.

6.       If you’re late for work, do you have to take it out on me?

7.       Thanks for waving.

8.       Thanks for waiting.

9.       Thanks for not running me over.

10.   I go over the speed limit downtown.

11.   Should sheriff’s deputies model good driving behavior, or turn right on red despite the signs while talking on a cell phone?

12.   I still don’t understand why people insist upon watering their lawns with our drinking water.

13.   What’s your rush when I get to the traffic light when you do?

Twenty Seven Thoughts While Riding to Work

1.       Despite all the efforts to structure the streets more safely, safety lies in the actions of the people who use them.

2.       Some people may never get the idea.

3.       You can’t argue with stupid people, who continue to argue their point even when they know it’s wrong.

4.       The tree covered streets of my neighborhood are much cooler than the streets of the downtown area.

5.       Electromagnetic loops respond mostly to cars.

6.       Right on red should be against the law in any area with a lot of pedestrians.

7.       Stop lines are not for a car’s rear wheels.

8.       Intersections are especially scary when crossing drivers roll to a non-stop.

9.       Never underestimate the impatience of a driver turning left.

10.   Facebook mobs are scary.

11.   I shouldn’t be surprised by those who refuse to believe clear evidence.

12.   Violence is easier said than done.

13.   Too easy, in fact.

14.   Don’t let anyone ruin your peace.

15.   Wheels in city government move slowly.

16.   Wheels in people’s minds move more slowly.

17.   Dangerous road conditions facilitate laziness.

18.   Being a contributing member of a group makes us happy.

19.   Crossing the street mid-block is not a revolutionary act.

20.   Though there is safety in numbers, sometimes a crowd makes me nervous.

21.   Riding through town is a friendly act.

22.   I’m glad my coffee cup fits in a bottle rack.

23.   The hardest part about riding to work in the summer is not sweating.

24.   All road users break laws sometimes.

25.   Helmets may look dorky, but no helmet looks stupid.

26.   Slick tires roll fast.

27.   Riding my bike to work is an act of happiness.

This week in interesting reading 6-17-11

File this one in the “duh” file… http://www.shareable.net/blog/Portland-Finds-Bike-Friendly-Policies-Boost-Local-Economy

Pedestrian-only streets are making a comeback  http://www.shareable.net/blog/a-simple-idea-to-transform-the-life-of-our-cities

Ticketed for riding in the bike lane…  http://www.planetizen.com/node/49801 

The importance of corners  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-r-wolfe/corners-as-baseline-for-u_b_875489.html

Who knew? Carmel, IN, the City of Roundabouts http://content.usatoday.net/dist/custom/gci/InsidePage.aspx?cId=indystar&sParam=47449000.story 

A better helmet http://www.grist.org/list/2011-06-16-cardboard-bike-helmets-are-safer-than-plastic 

Though they have no idea why (shorter trips? Less experienced riders taking fewer chances? More experienced riders riding in safer places?), it appears that those riding shared bikes are involved in fewer accidents than those riding their own bikes.  http://www.streetsblog.org/2011/06/16/from-london-to-d-c-bike-sharing-is-safer-than-riding-your-own-bike/  

Community development corporation and community land trust have similar mission, opposing tactics.  http://americancity.org/buzz/entry/3022/

Hazel Borys on Agrarian Urbanism http://placeshakers.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/the-allure-of-food-its-not-just-a-lifestyle-its-a-life/    

A Week's Worth of Interesting Reading

Several new parks being developed in Philadelphia depend on “heavy underwriting from philanthropic foundations, nonprofits, and private institutions.”

DC’s BikeShare program’s popularity causing supply problems

Architect Steven Fleming discusses his architectural focus on bicycles and bicycling, which he calls “Cycle Space.”

A call for more challenging park designs

An informal study shows no one really cares about smoking or not smoking in NYC’s Bryant Park.

I’m glad someone else thinks riding your bike is good for the soul

What crows tell us about ourselves, and evidence that crows don’t hate Dick Cheney.

Agriculture fitted into the Transect, for all you planner geeks.

My Front Yard Garden

I participated in a workshop a week or so ago with Tom Low and Guy Pearlman of the architectural and planning group, DPZ.  Any workshop about place-making gets me worked up, and I especially looked forward to this one with Tom Low.

Low has been advocating for form-based development codes for many years, in particular transect based planning, which looks at the entire span of development from city core to rural and wild areas. The standards are based not so much on the particular activity on a piece of land, and encourages mixed uses, scattering housing and stores and restaurants and offices, parks and schools in patterns that encourage walking and biking. The design of the buildings, and the number of buildings allowed changes as you get farther from the city center. Buildings in different contexts--urban to rural--should look different, as row houses differ from single-family homes. Low and Pearlman used the metaphor that the transect begins in the urban core and feathers outward. The codes allow for great place-making, as communities can decide what areas will be densest and what areas will be protected open space.

But even the transect, Low said, has become somewhat outdated. These days, folks want more local food; farmers markets have proliferated significantly in the past few years. So in addition to design standards, green space designation, and density regulation, the new transect should include areas for growing food.

What does a garden look like in the city core? How about in the first ring of suburbs? Some communities now allow residents to grow gardens in the right of way between the sidewalk and the street, which is often prohibited to allow for utility work. New community designs, new infill developments, indeed all developments, should include plans for community gardens, for example, and the zoning regulations should allow for them by right. Cities like Detroit already allow community gardening on city-owned vacant lots.

I like to plant food, and have for most of my adult life. I’m not an expert, and my favorite plants are those that don’t require a lot of tending, but I like picking lettuce, or Swiss chard, or tomatoes, or herbs from my yard for dinner. I tried a garden in my current home’s back yard, but it proved to be far too shady. So I dug up some more grass in the much sunnier front yard, and I plant there. I’ve had reasonable success, with two plantings last growing season, and have managed to have fresh produce over a period of quite a few months.

I try to keep my garden neat, and it’s small, and many of the plants are pretty. Tomatoes can get out of control, though, and I try not to let that worry me.  I left the hot peppers on the plant the past two years, after Quinn and I tried a couple, and they turned orange and red, dangling like ornaments.

I don’t plant there to be rebellious, though in this neighborhood there aren’t a lot of front-yard gardens. I plant there because growing some of my own food has always been comforting, and rewarding. I’ve had a number of conversations about the garden with passers-by (this is a very walkable neighborhood). I’m not quite sure what the others think.

Earlier this spring, a couple walked by with their dog. They stopped to chat as I weeded or otherwise puttered about the unplanted garden. “What are you planting this year?” they asked. My wife works in retail, and one day someone she was helping said, “I know you, you have a garden in your front yard.”

Crossing Over Water

Most everyone knows I love the Cottonwood Trail, a small trail system that winds through the flood plain of the Lawson’s Fork Creek with a trailhead less than a mile from my house. I have often blamed the trail and its owner the Spartanburg Area Conservancy (SPACE) for my moving to Spartanburg because I ran on it during a weekend visit to town to interview for a job.  Now nine years later I have run on the trail hundreds of times in all weather and every season, in deep untracked snow, sloppy mud, and dry dust. Right now wild roses bloom, and the creek flows deep. I have enjoyed seeing the system expand. I also now serve on the SPACE board, in part because of my commitment to the trail.

from SPACE website

But one part of the trail system is one of my favorite third places—the wetlands area, now crossed by a boardwalk that allows visitors to rest in the middle of one of the most interesting environments in Spartanburg. I’ve seen owls, deer, songbirds of many sorts, turtles and other amphibious critters on my crossings of the wetlands. Mounds and tufts of green pop up from the water, which rises and lowers according to the season and the particular drought conditions. Those wild roses climb toward the sun, and skeletal trees stripped of bark and limbs are scattered among the living flora. The place has even been the site of scarecrow weddings, courtesy of Hub-Bub artists-in-residence a few years ago.

But beyond the scenery, I have a thing for crossing over water. All the usual feelings—elemental, cleansing, flow—these all play into my crossings. But there’s a pull, indescribable, I reckon, even for one who tries to describe all things. I don’t always feel that tugging toward water, but a few places around have left me physically and psychically moved.

A few years ago I had a job in Inman, and my route to work crossed over the headwaters of the Lawson’s Fork, just before the various streams coalesce into one, the spot where maps first identify it as the Lawson’s Fork. The road descends into the floodplain, crosses the waters and rises again. There I feel a pull distinct from gravity, one that drew me both into the waters and downstream somehow at the same time. I, like the water, coalesced into stream, and the sensation felt healing.

Another of my favorite Lawson’s Fork crossings is over the abandoned bridge at Glendale. Our SPACE board meetings are held at Wofford’s Glendale Shoals Environmental Center, and late for my first meeting, I parked on the south side of the bridge and walked over to save the time of driving the longer way around.

The bridge passes over the calm pond created by the mill dam, over which water spills in cascades, proceeding on its eastward run over the Glendale Shoals that paddlers play in throughout the spring, and where my children have played over the years we’ve visited the Shoals. I have always loved the place where water fall over drops, whether natural or human-made like this one. There’s a solidity that reminds me of the substantial part of water, combined with the constant moving which reminds me of the ephemeral element of water, where you can’t put you foot in the same river twice, the philosopher tells us. The Shoals are a dynamic place, shifting with the rising and lowering of the creek levels.

All these crossings of the Lawson’s Fork keep me feeling a part of the flow of waters of the Earth, even just this small volume a universe itself. Every crossing is new, a ritual re-enactment of every other crossing if I let it, new water and ancient passage, changing course and matter.

Reflect for Safety

The City and County of Spartanburg kicked off a new pedestrian, cyclist and driver safety campaign, Reflect for Safety. Let's all pay more attention to other roadway users to make the streets safe for all of us.

"Every trip begins with walking"

At a conference I attended recently, a transportation planner said something so elementary that I had never thought about it in this particular way.  “Every trip,” she said, referring to car trips of all sorts, “begins with walking.” In other words, we walk out the door of our houses to our vehicles. Continue the thought, and every trip ends with walking as well.

Thinking about the way we design our houses for access to our vehicles is a little silly, but imagine if you had to walk around the block to get to your garage.  What if, instead of a front walk, we exited our houses directly onto the side of a busy road, one that had no sidewalk? Or suppose we had utility poles installed right in front of our doors.

Of course, these designs would never make it to the building stage.  But it doesn’t take much looking to see them around many towns and cities. Because the focus of street design has been for so long on moving automobile traffic, we have lost sight of the elements of our everyday transportation. Next time you leave the grocery store, for example, pay attention to the atmosphere for even walking to your car. Seldom is there a dedicated pathway for us, and we must put ourselves in automobile lanes as we traverse the sea of parking lot.

And look at this failure of design:

There are so many problems here: I stood on the sidewalk –protected pedestrian way, right?—to take the picture.  The two cars that passed me felt like I was in such danger there that they moved out of their travel lane to give me more room. The two poles so narrow the sidewalk that I couldn’t get through myself without turning sideways.  Now put a stroller, or a wheelchair there. And my favorite: someone with the city decided that this spot would be ideal for the Bicycle Friendly Community sign. Was that a sense of irony, or just straight ignorance?

Or this one:

This is dismissal time at a local high school. Of course there are students walking in the street, between cars waiting to turn left, and right in front of me driving straight past the line of left turners. Not a crosswalk in sight, no traffic signal, and I didn’t see any law enforcement directing traffic.

Or how about this one:

The new sidewalk you see extends about a half mile back past an elementary school, a community park, and a library, but ends about 30 yards or so from the entrance to a subdivision.

While we do see some renovations that try to add in facilities for walking, the incompleteness almost makes it more dangerous because it may give a false sense of safety.

These failures are not permanent, but fixing them will take a conscious effort on the part of planners, designers and engineers to allow for transportation choices. Our streets can look more like this one:

Or this one:

Streets are only safe if users make them that way, through vigilance and attention, but street design works either for or against those efforts.  If we remember, and remind our policy makers and transportation folks, that we are all at some point pedestrians, then perhaps we will see improvements made that keep us all safe.

Undisguised and naked

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
                                                Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

Right now in our fair ville, spring blooms are blowing up all over the place. Since January with the yellow Carolina jessamine, we have had a constant blur of color. In my neighborhood, rows of pink and white dogwood trees line the streets, piles of pink, white and various shades of red azaleas front the houses, and the noble trees are shedding flowers, leaving the allergy afflicted whining and oozing. It’s the type of shocking gaudiness that had TS Eliot thinking that April was the cruelest month, perhaps because of his own allergies.

Like Walt Whitman, I like the perfumes, but I will not let them intoxicate me. I prefer the blooming in the woods, where wild dogwoods are scattered about, white blooms floating among the greening forest. Wild forsythia fronds splay nearer the ground. The forest blooms more subtly, more naturally, perhaps, and you have to broaden your gaze to catch glimpses of flowers. 

Redbuds peak through the trees; closer to the ground purple and white flowers tint the mosses, but you have to look closely. To run in the spring woods reminds me of my intentions, to be a part of something much larger than myself, a nature that in many cases excludes us, sometimes harsh and forbidding. I give my attention to the small things, and begin to feel a pull, becoming not as one but as a piece of the whole, where the feeling of oneness depends exactly on our separateness. Each tree, each bloom, each rocky footstep, each breath, each pounding heartbeat, each rotting limb. As the detritus of the forest decays into life-giving soil, so too do the parts of my immediate surroundings coalesce into life-affirming epiphany.

But only for the moment, and then the return. Back into a design not of nature but of human beings, our division of gossip and toil and worry, fueled by a need for wealth and recognition and extraction.

Until the next run, and the attempted fulfillment of my deepest hope to become undisguised and naked.

There's running, and there's talking about running

I have long contended that the reason I am generally so happy is that I’m good at telling stories.

The stories we tell are not life, but only the means we have of arranging the chaos of life into manageable, comprehensible clips.  If we tried to narrate our lives as they happened, the stories would be full of digressions, non sequiturs, accidents, and tedium. 

So we tell stories.  We choose and arrange the random pieces of our lives in ways that create more cogent narratives, where actions lead to actions, where motivations are more or less clear, where characters can be introduced and developed in ways that the folks who populate our lives cannot be.  We can cut out what doesn’t matter, or what is embarrassing or not, we expand, highlight, contract, all in an effort to make sense out of what is otherwise and arguably non-sense.  We can create suspense, humor, gloom, or joy, all by how we arrange the words, the sentences, the paragraphs. 

As with all art, story-telling seeks to create (or recreate) particular feelings of a particular event or set of events.  We want readers and listeners to feel what we felt, to understand the physical and psychic boundaries crossed or approached, to laugh at the humor and cry at the sadness, to follow the process of falling in love, or to experience the beauty we experienced. We use to tricks to get our message across—metaphors, similes, analogies; we note and highlight irony, juxtaposition, and all sorts of other devices that scholars identify.  

But the actions we describe do not happen the way we describe them.  Life is not metaphor—we make metaphors out of the telling of it.  The fog rising from the lake in the early morning does not come on little cat feet, but that vision helps convey one I felt that morning, setting off on a 24-mile run, crossing the spillway as we started our way around the lake. 

The end of a bad stretch of the 2010 Smoky Mountain Relay.  I'm looking for a joke in there somewhere.

I seek in running the moment, the feeling of the air on my skin, the strength in my legs at the meeting of shoe and dirt, thoughts of nothing but where I am, how I feel, at one with the surroundings and the day.  Not that that always happens—often I think of work, or family, or the way I’ll tell the story of the run I’m on.

When I ran in road races, every other week or so, lowering my times and finishing in the top 5 of most of the local races I ran, I found the effortless gliding of a PR run one of the prime moments I sought.  And I over-ran that limit some, and feeling crappy I‘d often start into the story of the race—where I lost it, where the proverbial wheels came off.  Then I knew I was shattered, out of the moment, doomed to just hold on for whatever distance I had left.     

Though my running has changed, I still seek that gliding feeling, not necessarily for speed, but for distance and terrain.  Sometimes now the telling of the story gives me energy and laughs.  During that 24-mile run, I started rolling back and forth between feeling good and feeling bad.  Nineteen miles in, I got a little out of the moment, and thinking about the next 5 or so miles, I got ahead of me.  But I kept it in, and suddenly I thought that every other step was a good one.  I told Seth, “That was a good step.”  He was in the same state, replying, “That was a good 120 seconds.”  Saying it brought me back to it, and the chuckles helped.

I set new goals these days for races.  The varied terrain of trail races doesn’t really allow for PRs the way road races do; in my upcoming third 50k, I’ll climb more than the two previous races combined. But I have the same goals: love the day, love the woods, and say something funny at every aid station.  The last one keeps me occupied; I think of a lot of funny things, and then I have to pick the right one.  Of course, I can use two at one station. 

I’ll let you know how it goes.

More Vehicles Than People | Planetizen

More Vehicles Than People Planetizen

Concord, Massachussetts, hometown of Henry David Thoreau, has more cars than people.  My favorite line:  "Thoreau believed in asking deliberate questions and making deliberate choices,and these questions are as pertinent today as ever,” [Director of the Thoreau Society, Michael Frederick] said. Thoreau would probably appreciate 'the Catch-22' of more parents driving kids everywhere, he said. With all the other cars on the road, adults perceive it as safer than letting youngsters walk or bike, which leads to more parents driving more kids and 'an irony Thoreau would have worked with.'"

Night Running

In the more than 25 years I’ve been running for exercise, I’ve run in about every situation I can think of.  But lately, I’ve been running at night, on trails, with a headlamp.

I’ve run through the streets of Beijing, New York, Anchorage, and many other cities large and small; run in northern New Hampshire when it was 25 degrees below zero, and in Tucson, Arizona when it was 108.  I’ve run alone, with regular partners, with random strangers, and in large groups.  I’ve run in a couple hundred races or more, from 400 meters to 50 kilometers. 

This winter my two main training partners and I started running at night on trails, at first out of necessity (early dark) and then out of interest and desire.  As daylight hours extend, I sometimes start a run in the light, then finish in the dark by headlamp.  I’ve done some runs by myself with my dog, and some with my friends. 

Some folks think we’re crazy, asking for turned ankles and skinned hands and knees.  But the running style changes, slows slightly, we pick up our feet and plant them more firmly to assure good footing.  We run on familiar trails, but they are made unfamiliar by darkness.  It’s not always easy to know where we are, and trail surface becomes much more of a factor as we shine lights ahead of our steps.

Often, in the descending light, focusing without turning on the headlamp makes it easier to see the roots and rocks of the trail.  I feel Bristol hesitate just a bit as we approach major turns we both know well enough to anticipate.  When I turn the light on for good, he accelerates slightly to get just off the front of my light, the better to use his canine sight. With the light illuminating the trail just a few steps ahead of my feet, I have to let myself push on, trusting my light and feet.  The process takes getting used to.

Dark descends quickly at the end, leaving me with that eerie feeling of being watched, though I am comforted knowing we don’t have bears or big cats in this area, and by Bristol’s keen dog-awareness.  Trust my dog, I tell myself.  He’ll let me know if there’s anything out there.

The start line of this year's Rocky Raccoon 100-miler

These runs last about an hour or so, sometimes all of it in the dark.  Many 50-milers start in the dark, and if I ever run a 100-miler, I’ll have to run overnight, most likely.  

And this is definitely something to practice—it’s not easy to be alone, with nothing but a light, which makes a kind of bubble around my eyes.  I strain to see beyond the light, and remember Edward Abbey’s dictum to get rid of the light because it limits your sight. 

Now, with the time change, I likely won’t get in any more dark evening runs; perhaps I’ll get out early some mornings to get that start-in-the-dark practice. 

Built Environment 101

Despite calls to exercise more and eat healthier—which many have heard, as the running and aerobics crazes show—obesity rates in the United States have tripled over the last 30 years. Obesity rates among children have also tripled, with rising rates of adult-onset disease like Type II diabetes being diagnosed in children as young as 7 years old.  Poor and underserved populations are disproportionately affected.

These frightening statistics have led public health leaders like the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to target community design as one of the culprits, and have sought to make changes in policy and in the way we build. 

So now we hear new words slung around, words generally reserved for city planners and engineers, like “built environment,” “environmental change,” “connectivity,” “complete streets,” and “food deserts.” But what do these words mean?

The built environment is made up of all the stuff we build to meet our needs: roads, sidewalks, sewer rights-of-way, buildings, parking lots, and all that kind of thing.

 As I’ve said before, since World War II, the patterns of the built environment have favored automobiles travel, with interstates, wide roads with no sidewalks, and buildings set back from the street behind massive parking lots designed to hold Black Friday traffic. 

We’re seeing examples of environmental change in cities around the world as we try to retrofit the built environment to allow for pedestrians, bicyclists, and mass-transit users safe passage. We’ve added sidewalks, reduced the number and width of travel lanes, and increased the mileage of bike lanes. In many areas, renovations of defunct shopping areas have included more pedestrian friendly designs to create the types of neighborhoods many of our planners grew up in.

These renovations and additions have the goal of making our communities more connected.  Connectivity is the degree to which the amenities of a city are accessible by foot, bicycle, and mass transit. Can you walk to school? Can you get to a grocer by bike? Is there more than one exit from a subdivision? Many studies show that if a neighborhood has sidewalks, more people will walk.  Many of these changes are based on the “if-you-build-it-they-will-come” idea, but research and evidence shows that these changes result in a healthier community.

But roadway renovations are not always immediate. In that case, a Complete Streets policy, in which the body that owns the road makes a commitment to include sidewalks, bike lanes and transit stops in all new road way development and in any major renovations. This type of policy allows for changes in administration and staff without losing the commitment. The South Carolina Department of Transportation, the City and the County of Spartanburg all have resolved to build complete streets.

While physical activity is one element of the obesity problem, eating is the other. Many communities are becoming aware of a dynamic of the built environment called food deserts. A food desert is a neighborhood where unhealthy food options, like fast food restaurants and convenience stores, significantly outnumber healthy food options.  When that ratio exceeds 5-1, we call that a food desert.  The City of Spartanburg’s ratio is 8.5 to 1. In other words, for every grocery store or year-round produce store, there are 8.5 fast food restaurants and convenience stores. If you put eight plates of cookies and one plate of carrots out at a party, which one will folks fill up on?

The food desert problem is complicated with free market capitalism, private property rights and “this economic climate.” But many cities, counties, and states are using incentives to attract new grocery stores and other fresh food outlets, and are working with existing convenience stores to offer more healthy options.