I spent last week in Houston for work and as part of the trip I had to rent a car. The part of town I stayed and worked in is an area I’m quite familiar with and remembering my way around came pretty quickly. What was more of a shock was just how aggressive and dangerous drivers had become. Red light running in west Houston seemed like a sport, where different drivers were showing off just how late they could run a red. Tailgating on the freeways made Los Angeles versions seem tame. And just some of the behaviors of drivers were off putting; At one point there was a car honking at people who stopped at a red light. The car sped into the next lane, cut the cars off at the light to make a right turn while not stopping for traffic that had the right of way. I have seen some similar driving behavior at home in Portland but not at the scale I saw it in Houston.

Then, a few days ago an article popped up on the Washington Post titled, “Why so many Americans prefer sprawl to walkable neighborhoods”. I wish I could share the full text here but the gist of the article is that Americans prefer sprawling areas because typically a house in the area is bigger for the same amount of money as a smaller home in a walkable area.

People, however, do not live according to the preferences of planners. Pew Research Center recently asked 5,079 American adults whether they would prefer to live in a community where the houses are smaller and closer to each other but schools, stores and restaurants are within walking distance — in other words, a 15-minute neighborhood — or where the houses are larger and farther apart but schools, stores and restaurants are several miles away — in other words, sprawl.

Most people, it turned out, preferred sprawl.

 
This seems like the antithesis of Europe, where most cities and even most towns are walkable with public transit filling in the longer gaps. Some of this is simply cultural, with Europeans spending large amounts of time outside of their homes. Americans have the concept of the third place but I don’t know that it’s as central to American life as it used to be.

Thinking about my work trip to Houston, I also wonder how much of it is tied to the amount of time the city sees very hot and humid conditions. Walking a half mile in 98% humidity with a feels like temperature of 110 is not something most people would enjoy, so the entire culture has been focused on air-conditioned car transportation. But my time in the car in Houston had me reflecting on just that, the amount of time I was in a car. I tracked one trip, to go from my hotel, two miles down the road to grab breakfast for my team, and one mile from there to the office. I didn’t count the time picking up the food, just the time in the car; 38 minutes total. It seems like an absurd amount of time to go three miles but at rush hour, that’s what it took.

I rode my cargo bike tonight in 38 degree weather with my toddler on the back. It was two miles to the restaurant and two miles back and each way took me around fifteen minutes. He listened to music, asked me questions about cars we passed, and I think had fun time. This isn’t to brag, I just want more of it for everyone. It felt like better time together than sitting in traffic getting frustrated. I want more people to enjoy their commutes, their errands, the mundane. Make it an adventure. Maybe a bike can be part of that.

Cycling isn’t for everyone, but can we make areas more walkable while preserving the bigger homes? Maybe we should measure our success and our surroundings by how safe and easy it is for our kids to walk to school. And I don’t think Portland has perfected any of this. We have a long way to go in making the streets safer for all pedestrians.

I don’t know that we’ll ever build “European style” cities in the United States with large, family focused apartment blocks. In fact it seems like builders are doing the opposite, building lots of studio and 1-bedroom apartments. But Carmel, Indiana has transformed a chunk of town into a walkable and bikable haven in an interesting experiment of city design. Part of the design is separating car and bike traffic but also just simply slowing car traffic down.

Unfortunately the cynic in me just sees everyone enjoying the time in their cars alone too much to ever entertain the idea of a walkable or bikable city.

Anyway, this was a long winded way of saying, I’d love to see more people walking and biking around their towns and cities. It is a great way of enjoying your neighborhood and turning those errands you have into adventures.