A pedestrian perspective.
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WHY DON’T CONSERVATIVES LIKE TO WALK?
Will Oremus follows up on Tom Vanderbilt’s series on the crisis in American walking:
I noticed something about the cities with the highest “walk scores.” They’re all liberal. New York, San Francisco, and Boston, the top three major cities on Walkscore.com, are three of the most liberal cities in the country. In fact, the top 19 are all in states that voted for Obama in 2008. The lowest-scoring major cities, by comparison, tilt conservative: Three of the bottom four—Jacksonville, Oklahoma City, and Fort Worth—went for McCain. What explains the correlation? Don’t conservatives like to walk?
More here in Slate. [Conclusion: “It may be easier for a city to turn liberal than for a city to turn walkable.”]
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ZERO PEDESTRIAN DEATHS? IS IT POSSIBLE
Chicago is going to try. Sweden already has:
The idea of aiming for zero traffic deaths may be novel in the United States, but in Sweden, it’s national policy. In 1997, the Swedish Parliament passed the Vision Zero Initiative, with the “ultimate target of no deaths or serious injuries on Sweden’s roads.” Currently, the plan calls for an interim goal of reducing deaths and injuries to 50 percent of 2007 figures by 2020.
Has it worked? Zero is still some ways off – 2050 is the target date now — but the absolute number of traffic fatalities in Sweden continues to fall even as traffic is on the rise. And compared to the United States, their numbers are impressive: In 2009, Sweden had 4.3 traffic deaths per 100,000 population, while the United States had 12.3 (the European Union average was 11 in 2007).
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A WALK IN THE CEMETERY
I love how Mountain View is upending the morbid associations we typically have with cemeteries.
FOOD! A WALKING TOUR OF MOUNTAIN VIEW CEMETERY
SUNDAY, JUNE 3 – 10:00AM
CELEBRATION HALL – 5445 FRASER ST (ENTRANCE AT 39TH Ave)
$10 cash only.
Chris Mathieson, community historian, discusses the history of Vancouver’s relationship with food through introductions to fishermen, farmers, hunters, shopkeepers and more. Food traditions associated with death and cemeteries will also be explored.
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WRT cities/liberals/conservatives –
Maybe walkable dense urban cities attract liberals and the other cities do not.
i.e. A bias (by attracting liberals) towards one city would then result in a higher liberal score than another city that does not have such attraction. So it may be a characteristic of liberals preferring walkable cities, rather than conservatives not liking them.
Also, those other cities seem like midwest / southern cities that would be conservative.
Vancouver tried to eliminate traffic deaths in the 1930s & ’50s but failed miserably to reach “100 Deathless Days.” The thinking on the problem/issue seems to have evolved for the better since then, IMO, but some pretty huge hurdles still exist for zero pedestrian deaths to be possible here in the foreseeable future.
http://pasttensevancouver.wordpress.com/2012/02/23/100-deathless-days-2/