March 28, 2007
Presented to the 14th International Pedestrian Conference, Boulder, CO – October 1, 1993
ABSTRACT:
“Walkability” is a quality of place, one that is being eroded by the day throughout the world. Although the term has been appearing in literature for some time, the author, a pedestrian rights activist and public consultation practitioner, knows of no attempt to measure it. This paper attempts to do that, as well as give three practical purposes for using the “walkability index”. One such use is to provide a motivation to induce more people to become “local heroes”, by re-establishing their links with their streets and neighbourhoods and committing personal resources to rebuild their local physical and social infrastructure, so necessary to human life and the ecology of “the commons”.
I. WHY MEASURE WALKABILITY?
I believe that I live in one of North America’s most walkable neighbourhoods. Unfortunately, its housing is also among the highest priced in the city. Last year, its homeowners and business owners faced steep increases in property taxes which are based on market values. Many of my neighbours challenged the market-value-based property taxes with the argument that market value of one’s property does not necessarily reflect one’s ability to pay taxes. Others argued differently: that the average person in our neighbourhood is more likely to walk and therefore has less need for the municipal-level infrastructure paid for by property taxes.
This got me thinking. I had always liked the idea of being able to measure this quality called walkability. But now there might be a very important use for it. What if a collection of such measurements – in the form of a rating system or index – could be used in calculating property taxes and, for new buildings, the initial development fee? This may seem unfair, since it comes close to being an example of user-pay, but would be applied not to the individual or the household, but to the basic unit of walkability, the street block and the neighbourhood.
The index could also be useful to homebuyers who could use the index to settle matters such as: Are the streets safe? Is transit service good? Will we need one car, two cars, or even no car? >>Continue Reading This Article>>
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July 15, 2006
Say what you will about James Howard Kunstler, but I think we need people like him. People that say what needs to be said, and sometimes abrasively. As we have seen throughout history, the educated people that say blunt and controversial statements often get the most media attention. Mr. Kunstler can certainly fit into this category. He is an “expert” on the devastating effects that peak oil and rising oil prices will have on the U.S. and its economy. He basically predicts that this outcome is inevitable if we do not change our oil consumption habits immediately. He is the author of several books, including The Geography of Nowhere and his latest book, The Long Emergency. If you have not read anything by him or heard him speak before, you should start with his bio and website. Be forewarned, he often uses explicit language to make his points.
Mr. Kunstler recently wrote an article on the Suburban Fantasy at TomPaine.com, and I wanted to share a few important excerpts from that article:
It’s actually kind of funny to hear Americans complain these days about the cost of gasoline and how it is affecting their lives. What did they expect after setting up an easy-motoring utopia of suburban metroplexes that make incessant driving inevitable? And how did they fail to register the basic facts of the world oil situation, which have been available to us for decades?
Trouble with oil will spell huge problems with how we grow our food, how we conduct trade, how we move around and how we inhabit the terrain of North America. These systems are going to wobble and eventually fail unless some effort is made to reform their scale and their procedures. For example, Wal-Mart’s profit margins will disappear as higher diesel fuel prices hit its “warehouse-on-wheels.�
Now, in the face of this, you’d think that the national leadership in politics, business and science would prepare the public for substantial necessary changes in the way we do things. What we are seeing across the board, though, is merely a desperate wish to keep the cars running by any conceivable means, at all costs. That is the sole target of our focus. Our leaders don’t get it. We citizens have to make other arrangements. >>Continue Reading This Article>>
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