Freakonomics podcast: Why Is Everyone Moving to Dallas?
Shortly before listening to this podcast, I was riding my bicycle on a weekend afternoon, attempting to enjoy myself. But the mixed-use trails were clogged with walkers--two, sometimes three, or even four abreast. I would ring my obnoxiously loud bell as I approached from behind but they wouldn't budge. Invariably oncoming traffic would impede my ability to pass and I would come to an almost complete stop behind the pedestrians until it was safe to pass.
Other cyclists would pass me dangerously without so much as a grunt for warning.
So the next day I tried the roads instead. At least now I got to play the role of the unmoving pedestrian in the equation. The key difference being the chances of a cyclist being killed by a car is an order of magnitude greater than the chances of a pedestrian being killed by a bicyclist.
I was passed again and again by overly-large SUVs at dangerous proximity to my left arm. At one point I was on a road where a bike lane had been painted on the rightmost two feet of the lane, but it was remarkably full of dirt, sticks, glass, and other road debris. As I continued riding in the traffic lane itself, an angry older woman (in a large SUV, of course) gunned it from behind me, slowed again as she passed--now in the opposing lane of traffic--and gestured with obvious frustration towards said "bike lane".
She soon turned into a housing development, presumably to her home and not to some emergency as warranted by her frustration at being momentarily delayed by my presence.
I normally ride quite early in the morning and on roads surrounding White Rock Lake, which at that hour are mostly used by cyclists and runners serious enough to work out before dawn. What I took away from my weekend afternoon bike rides wasn't that Dallas is in desperate need of bicycle infrastructure or some basic maintenance of their roads (which it is), or that drivers are inherently mean people (or rather, driving is an inherently mean-spirited activity, which it is), it was simply that there are now too many people inhabiting space designed for not that many people. Space designed for its inhabitants to have their own little area, which they are intended by design to extend by climbing into metal and glass boxes and moving--ever more slowly as each additional isolated person moves into this space--to another little area.
"Car-centric" is the word, and I believe it was used in the podcast. We need different phrases for this kind of urban design, especially as it crumbles under the weight of increasingly dense populations.
"Other-antagonistic"
"Selfish Urban Design"
"Diseased Urban Infrastructure"
"Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time Urban Design"
"Oppressive Application of Asphalt"
Shortly before listening to this podcast, I was riding my bicycle on a weekend afternoon, attempting to enjoy myself. But the mixed-use trails were clogged with walkers--two, sometimes three, or even four abreast. I would ring my obnoxiously loud bell as I approached from behind but they wouldn't budge. Invariably oncoming traffic would impede my ability to pass and I would come to an almost complete stop behind the pedestrians until it was safe to pass.
Other cyclists would pass me dangerously without so much as a grunt for warning.
So the next day I tried the roads instead. At least now I got to play the role of the unmoving pedestrian in the equation. The key difference being the chances of a cyclist being killed by a car is an order of magnitude greater than the chances of a pedestrian being killed by a bicyclist.
I was passed again and again by overly-large SUVs at dangerous proximity to my left arm. At one point I was on a road where a bike lane had been painted on the rightmost two feet of the lane, but it was remarkably full of dirt, sticks, glass, and other road debris. As I continued riding in the traffic lane itself, an angry older woman (in a large SUV, of course) gunned it from behind me, slowed again as she passed--now in the opposing lane of traffic--and gestured with obvious frustration towards said "bike lane".
She soon turned into a housing development, presumably to her home and not to some emergency as warranted by her frustration at being momentarily delayed by my presence.
I normally ride quite early in the morning and on roads surrounding White Rock Lake, which at that hour are mostly used by cyclists and runners serious enough to work out before dawn. What I took away from my weekend afternoon bike rides wasn't that Dallas is in desperate need of bicycle infrastructure or some basic maintenance of their roads (which it is), or that drivers are inherently mean people (or rather, driving is an inherently mean-spirited activity, which it is), it was simply that there are now too many people inhabiting space designed for not that many people. Space designed for its inhabitants to have their own little area, which they are intended by design to extend by climbing into metal and glass boxes and moving--ever more slowly as each additional isolated person moves into this space--to another little area.
"Car-centric" is the word, and I believe it was used in the podcast. We need different phrases for this kind of urban design, especially as it crumbles under the weight of increasingly dense populations.
"Other-antagonistic"
"Selfish Urban Design"
"Diseased Urban Infrastructure"
"Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time Urban Design"
"Oppressive Application of Asphalt"