I agree with those who note that our car dependency is a systemic, self-perpetuating problem.
Around the corner from me is a Yoga studio and a Tax Accountant that use a somewhat run-down building. That building, according to my elderly neighbors who've lived in their house since the 1960s, was once the cluster of corner stores: the grocery, the dairy, the butcher shop. To do your shopping, you'd walk down to the store, buy your food, and walk home. Another block down is the neighborhood school. Once there was a library somewhere near here, but within walking distance. And so on.
We do have a convenience store just two blocks away, and various other things within easy walking distance. But there's a heck of a lot of stuff we routinely need that can't be purchased at stores I can walk to.
The flip side of this is that opportunities have expanded, as well. In the days of the corner grocery, your daughters would not have been able to take karate, because that kind of enrichment activity would not have been available to a child in Minneapolis.
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Date: 2007-04-11 05:20 pm (UTC)Around the corner from me is a Yoga studio and a Tax Accountant that use a somewhat run-down building. That building, according to my elderly neighbors who've lived in their house since the 1960s, was once the cluster of corner stores: the grocery, the dairy, the butcher shop. To do your shopping, you'd walk down to the store, buy your food, and walk home. Another block down is the neighborhood school. Once there was a library somewhere near here, but within walking distance. And so on.
We do have a convenience store just two blocks away, and various other things within easy walking distance. But there's a heck of a lot of stuff we routinely need that can't be purchased at stores I can walk to.
The flip side of this is that opportunities have expanded, as well. In the days of the corner grocery, your daughters would not have been able to take karate, because that kind of enrichment activity would not have been available to a child in Minneapolis.