Most nights of the week, you can find two or three of my closest friends and I sitting in my apartment, gossiping and eating dinner. While we sit together, we recount our days, think toward the future and enjoy the closeness of Clairmont. I savor these moments, knowing that when we graduate, we will be scattered to different cities across the country, unable to participate in our nightly communion. After we leave Emory, we will no longer live in a community as close and walkable. As we start our post-graduation life, there are few cities that will be as walkable as our Emory community. Instead of focusing on sprawling acres of land, cities and towns worldwide should focus on creating highly walkable and pedestrian-focused communities.
In recent years, there has been an influx in conversations surrounding the creation of walkable neighborhoods. A walkable city prioritizes residents’ ability to conduct errands and other business matters on foot. Walk Score, a website promoting walkable cities, scores cities across the country based on residents’ abilities to run errands on foot. Residents who live in walkable cities can better support their local economies, reduce their environmental impact and have closer relationships with community members. Fostering a tight-knit community is close to my heart, as creating a strong community and communal care is essential to living a sustainable and happy life. As we look to the future, we should create more human-scale cities which prioritize walkability.
Human-scale towns and cities have numerous economic benefits such as increasing the foot traffic around business districts and promoting tourism which helps both local businesses and other residents of the city. In my hometown of Carrboro, N.C., there is a biweekly farmer’s market at the town hall. Every Wednesday and Sunday, I can walk to the town hall and buy products from local farms and vendors. The mile-and-a-half long walk is spent on nicely maintained sidewalks and I can enjoy the market without worrying about transportation. As a result, residents in walkable communities can run their errands closer to their homes, promoting their local economy. People who spend less money on transportation costs may invest more money into other areas of their lives, including groceries, local artists and other community-centered events.
Currently, the costs of maintaining sidewalks is far cheaper than the maintenance and resources required to maintain roads. In 2012, cities in the U.S. spent less than 2% of transportation funds on sidewalks, whereas 80% was used on roads and highways. Our current road-based community planning redirects resources for walking in favor of roads and parking. When civil engineers and city planners prioritize automobile-oriented travel, accessibility is decreased due to the increase in travel time and distance. Cities and towns direct land usage toward large roads and parking lots that city management could use for other initiatives like improving sidewalks and maintaining bike lanes, which benefit the entirety of the community.
Large parking lots and roads across cities and towns are not accessible to every citizen. Not everyone can afford a car, and our automobile-oriented model of cities privileges those with cars. Beyond decreasing barriers to community engagement, walkable cities are generally more affluent and have higher levels of social equity. These residents also do not have to worry about how to gain access to basic needs in our car-centered reality. Our default spending on transportation costs should prioritize methods of transportation that are accessible to a large number of people throughout the community.
While New York City has a high walkability score, other cities with more urban sprawl, as defined as a city’s sweeping expansion into the rural areas around it, do not fare as well. For instance, living in many places in Atlanta requires some form of transportation. Walking outside the Emory bubble, even a few feet, you are immediately confronted with a less walkable area. Walking to the Kroger on Briarcliff Rd., a mere 1.3 miles involves trekking up an impossible large hill and walking without sidewalks for half the journey. In numerous neighborhoods across the city, most errands done by the average person cannot be completed by walking. Instead, citizens must spend time and money driving around the city, wasting gas, to conduct necessary business. The majority of transportation in the U.S. relies on fossil fuels, propelling us closer to environmental disaster. For example, automobiles that are crafted with more plastic materials become more difficult to recycle. Instead of reusing steel materials, plastic sits in landfills for decades. Electric cars' environmental impact, sitting in landfills for potentially centuries, lasts far longer than their initial fossil fuel output.
Electric cars have often been touted as a clean alternative to our current fossil fuel-based gasoline cars, but, as much as I want a silver Prius, even electric cars bear a hefty cost to the environment. The manufacturing and recycling of electric cars still have significant environmental costs while they utilize electricity, which is not fossil fuel-free. Car companies use significant energy to create electric cars, which is derived from fossil fuels. These cars merely circumvent traditional fossil fuel usage, while consumers believe they are helping the environment. Using electric cars is not the gateway to a cleaner environment; rather, reducing the number of cars and the frequency of their operation would decrease fossil fuel usage by lowering the number of emissions during travel.
Building and reimagining cities to be walkable is our path toward flourishing. I want to live in a walkable community when looking toward the future. I want to support my local community by walking down the street to a coffee shop, walking to pick up my groceries and supporting local businesses in a neighborhood. Without investing in walkable cities, we are failing to invest in ourselves and our cities. For my last year at Emory, I will cherish the closeness I have with my friends. When I leave, I will look for a city where I can create the same intimacy I have found at Emory.
Rachel Broun (23C) is from Carrboro, North Carolina
