-
To respond privately, use the "Reply" command.
To post to the list "Forward" to [at]
-
Laura Mondino wrote:
> My
> grandma, smart lady that she is, takes her bike and loads it with all the
> bags. She does not ride it for fear of falling, and pushes it like a cart.
> It takes her most of the morning to buy the groceries
Despite all that, I suspect your grandma is doing a lot better than most
of us in the health and peace of mind department. <:)
> I am all for creating pedestrian friendly areas around Austin, but: we also
> need to find a way to transport to that location, yes, it would be funny to
> close downtown to cars....
I think there's probably a middle ground between recreating a medieval
village and the parts of Austin where a human literally can not get from
one side of the street to the other without driving 2-3 miles. The
first 10,000 years of civilization consisted of life with no cars at all
(somehow, people survived!), the next 70 years, most particularly in the
US, were spent recreating human habitat to accommodate motor vehicles
above all else, and, I strongly suspect the next 10,000 years (in the at
this point highly unlikely event that there will be another 10,000
years) will likely be spent mostly sans cars again.
Stores like Wheatsville and Breed's Hardware make you realize that you
don't really need a 100,000sf Megalomart to find most of the stuff you
need; in point of fact I frequently find items at Breed's that I
couldn't find at Home Depot -- they just don't have stacks of quantity
500 lying about in the store like Home Depot does. Like cable TV with
300 channels of unwatchable trash, the monster big box operations are
mostly filled with cheap plastic junk no one in their right mind would
buy anyway. Just like I'd rather have just one channel of interesting
programs rather than a choice between 300 channels of Anne Nicole Smith
docudramas, I'd rather be limited to buying a head of locally grown
organic lettuce at Wheatsville over the 100 different varieties of
mercury-contaminated Crunchycheezy Freedom Frize(tm) available at
Walmart. Given this epiphany, it follows that having utility retail
within easy walking/biking distance of your home is nothing more than a
matter of good urban planning and the will to make it so, and with
utility retail within walking distance and work/school a few transit
stops away, who needs a car save for the occasional exceptional errand?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in messages are solely that of the author
and not of the list administrators nor Druma Inc (sponsor 14gram.com).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe & "howto" info, send a blank email to [at]
-
