Accessible Places

Accessible places are those where you have a choice of how to get around, especially including the self-propelled choices of walking and cycling. If you can choose to drive, walk, bike, or take the train, then you can do what makes the most sense. If you can only drive, then you have no choice, nor do any of the other people clogging the highway ahead of you. The New Urbanism has developed many tools over the past quarter-century to deliver transportation choice. And that choice must prefer self-propelled methods over those driven by engines, because transportation choice isn’t just about using less fuel, but must include the option of using no fuel at all. The benefits of walking and biking go beyond saving fuel, however, as they are the only modes of transportation that actually make you healthier. The New Urbanism now has a full toolbox for creating accessible places. @urban_asher if you need to separate bikes from cars in the city, the cars are going too fast. Rush Hour: the time of day nobody can possibly rush because the streets are too clogged. There are almost never injurious crashes when two pedestrians run into each other; only when a motorized vehicle is involved.

Cars have existed for one out of the 70 or so centuries we have been building streets, yet they have completely taken over the street with little space left for people cycling or on foot. If cars were creatures they would be considered an invasive species. There are many great streets where nobody drives, but no great streets where nobody walks.

The domination of #urbanism by any single type of transport, housing, workplace, retail form, demographic, or other major characteristic renders urbanism fundamentally unsustainable in the long run.

Richness and depth of interconnections between all things is one of the defining characteristics of nature. Poverty and shallowness of interconnections between only a few types of things is one of the defining characteristics of #industrialized #urbanism. Networks of travel in sustainable places mimic nature in this regard. No place with only a single mode of transport can be a Living City unless that mode is walking. An auto-dominated city is on life support, with life-sustaining resources piped in from far away, and can be held hostage by those with fuel, whether oil companies in your own country or foreign powers with oil.
Most of the news that follows on this page is bad news, because we've made such a mess of access to places where we live, work, shop, learn, and play. But in each section on economic health, environmental health, and human health, we begin and end with hope, and the conclusion is always Walk Appeal, which is the greatest hope for accessible places, and has earned a place among the initiatives of the Original Green.