Originally Posted by
gerv
When I first arrived in Des Moines, I lived about 2 miles from my work in a suburb. When I arrived, I intended to either walk or take a bus to work, since I had no money for a car. I started doing this for a while, but felt severely out of place, since no one -- and I mean NO ONE -- uses the sidewalks in this suburb. For me, 2 miles was definitely doable, but somehow culturally taboo.
What I observed was that most people didn't walk because they had no idea of what a walkable distance was. Their automobile use prevented them from understanding what distances require a car and what distance can be done by bike/walking.
Years later, I run into quite a few people who say they would like to walk (bike or whatever...) to work but...
Of course, there are many reasons for this. However, sadly, most people don't do enough walking to even fathom what a walkable/bikeable distance is.
Have you observed this?
I observe this all the time. Like others, I encounter people at work that are really impressed that I bicycle, or sometimes walk, the 2 (two!) miles to work. Though I shouldn't be, I am often surprised to learn that many of my coworkers view a distance of even a mile as too far to walk. It's actually kind of pathetic. The priest at my church is from Malawi. In his country, people routinely walk 8-10 miles one way just to go to mass, and think absolutely nothing of it. (If you own a bike there, you're considered almost as wealthy as someone who owns a cow.) I think it's a uniquely American thing. My father is in reasonably good shape for his age, but he gets really annoyed if he has to walk for any distance; he regards it as almost insulting. De Tocqueville noticed the same thing among the Americans he observed almost 200 years ago; even the poorest people he met in this country would do almost anything to avoid the stigma of having to walk anywhere at all.