Walking in LA, and in Phoenix


Although there are parts of Los Angeles, and Phoenix, where you see people walking, walking is actually rare in those towns - these places were designed for cars, and grew up with the automobile.

When I lived in Los Angeles, in the 1980s, I rarely walked. Of course I'd walk along the beach, or in a park, but very rarely along the street. There was a song at the time called "Walking in LA" which said that "nobody walks in LA", and more specifically "only a nobody walks in LA". In other words, if you didn't travel in a car, you were a "nobody". It's a tough attitude, and you still see it in Los Angeles and Phoenix, where cars are king and anything other than cars, such as bicycles or pedestrians, are seen as an annoyance.

Of course things are changing, and many of the new neighborhoods, and the updated older ones, are now including what I call "human scale". Not just narrow sidewalks inches away from traffic, but nice wide sidewalks, including trees. Cars are still king, so it can be difficult to keep them from blocking sidewalks, or parked where people need to walk, so it's a continual challenge. People who travel in cars tend to have an attitude that they are "somebody" and people who are walking are "nobodies". It's not always true, but it is most of the time.

As you can tell, I walk a lot nowadays. I live in Glendale, which is a suburb of Phoenix, in a neighborhood that was built in the 1980s. And as soon as you get away from the neighborhood streets, you're walking just inches away from cars going at what I call "freeway speeds". Walking along the sidewalk on 67th Avenue feels as if you're walking along the shoulder of a freeway. The speed limit is nominally 40, but 50-55 is considered a safe speed, and often cars are going even faster. The turn lanes into the shopping centers are designed more like freeway exits, and are designed to be taken at a fairly high rate of speed. I really can't blame someone in a car being unable to avoid pedestrians at the speeds that are completely normal. It's just a bad design for pedestrians. It's very good for cars!

Don't get me wrong - I love cars, and they are the best way to get around Phoenix, and Los Angeles. When you're inside of a car, there's a feeling of safety, not to mention the air conditioning! Outside of a car, there's a feeling that if anyone sneezes, or looks at their phone, they're gonna be up on the sidewalk at high speed, running you over. It happens.

There really isn't a solution for this in a neighborhood like mine. I try to stay away from the main streets, but that's where the Neighborhood Market is, so I have no choice. I wouldn't ask the city to close a lane so that I could have a safer place to walk, and maybe some trees, because that's what would have to be done. As a pedestrian, I'm very rare so I can't imagine any reason to put so many other people to that inconvenience just for my safety and comfort. I understand.

I'll continue walking. Thank you for walking with me.

Image at the top of this post: My favorite walking shoes, in front of the place where I get my haircut, at 59th Avenue and Peoria, Glendale, Arizona.
If you liked this article, and would like to see more, please consider becoming a patron of History Adventuring on Patreon. If you're already a patron, thank you! You make this happen!

 Click here to become a Patron!
History adventuring posts are shared there daily. The basic tier is a dollar a month, and the PhD tier, which includes "then and now" photos, billboards, aerials, videos, and super high-definition photos, is five dollars a month, and is discounted for seniors, veterans, and students.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is ...
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the...
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me...
Read more