The Tragic State of a Car-based Country

I recently spent a week in the Denver Colorado metropolitan area. I was amazed to see how un-acommodating our cities and roads have become to pedestrian life. In the majority of places we live in, if you don't have a car to get around and function, you're just about screwed!

You might wonder what I'm meaning by pedestrian life. Have you ever been to New York or the cool shopping district in your nearby town or city that people naturally gravitate to and these places seem to just invite people to hang out? There are specific physical factors creating these types of people friendly environments, making a desirable place to hang out and be.

Fast-moving, noisy traffic, and big wide streets with no sidewalks make a city, town, or neighborhood an undesirable place to be. On the other hand, narrow streets, slow moving traffic, big wide sidewalks, stores and restaurants; all these factors combine to make a place that people naturally congregate in.

Here's a fascinating article in the December 2004 Wired Magazine featuring a traffic engineer in Holland who is doing some highly innovative thinking on redesigning streets and intersections. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/traffic.html

There's an older book title The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. In spite of this book's 1960's publishing date, it has some forward thinking perspectives about cities, architecture, streets, and the self-governing power of people.

To all you architects, city planners, developers, civil engineers, and other related persons, please steer us away from the the desert wasteland of stranding us in our homes and malls and set us free with lively thriving places to be.