Have you ever had a friend return from a vacation and gush about how great it was to walk in the place they’d visited? “You can walk everywhere! To a café, to the store. It was amazing!” Immediately after saying that, your friend hops in their car and drives across the parking lot to the Starbucks to which they could easily have walked.
Why does walking feel so intuitive when we’re in a city built before cars, yet as soon as we return home, walking feels like an unpleasant chore that immediately drives us into a car?
Not just the width of the street, but the pedestrian infrastructure surrounding it too!
Walking to the nearest corner store from my home requires me to cross the same 2 lane road a total of 4 times, unless I feel inclined to ignore the sidewalks and step on strangers’ properties.