Buffalo Bayou Montage [Shannon Stoney]
- Feb. 24, 2009
- 7:04 AM
Houston Belongs to the Cars
Buffalo Bayou Montage [Shannon Stoney]
Shortly after I moved to Houston, I had the weird thought that it was actually a city where cars were in charge and ran the city. Humans were just sort of their servants. We provide them places to park; we maintain them and gas them up. The actual environment of Houston looks more like an environment a car would think of than one a human would want: all those miles of concrete ramps, some of them way up in the air! Some parts of Houston look like an amusement park for cars, especially where several freeways come together. The other day I saw an article about a conference where a man named Timothy Papandreou elaborated on that idea. Papandreou discusses the fact that cities like Houston and LA (where he worked as a transportation manager) force people to drive even when they would rather bicycle or walk. I live within easy bicycling distance of my job--about four miles--but the ride would be so uncomfortable and dangerous that I don't bicycle there: I drive. Walking would be equally unpleasant, because I-45 separates me from my workplace, and I would have to somehow pass under it, along with a lot of fast-moving cars. So, the environment is convenient and fun for cars; not so much for the human in her own little soft, vulnerable body. Papandreou imagines alternative uses for all that concrete space that we devote to cars--the freeways and parking lots. What if all the cars disappeared? Wouldn't it be great fun to ride your bike down I-45, with several hundred of your closest friends? In Walker Percy's novel, Love in the Ruins, Percy imagines a future world where interstate highways have turned into crumbling picturesque ruins, covered with kudzu vines. I look forward to it.
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Filed Under: Walking
Jumping K-Rails « Mad To Be Saved writes:
06.22.09
8:43 am
[...] Maybe even more so in Houston. Houston is all about driving. As Shannon Storey notes in a blog on OffCite.org, Houston seems to be a city that a car dreamed up, not a [...]