I just came back from a year in Germany. After nearly a year of
biking around there my second day biking to work in the US I got hit
by a car and injured my left knee pretty seriously
In Germany I could take off from my apartment and within minutes be on
a network of paths that were only used by bicycles, pedestrians, and
occasional farm equipment and which went on for miles. Its sad that
with all the money this country has people can't get their priorities
straight and do things right.
In Germany there is a highly tangible component of daily life that if
filled with quality. If you put a price on it I would say that the
average person over their is far, far richer than almost all people
living in the US. To be able to go out your door and withing minutes
be on hiking and biking trails, free from cars and traffic congestion.
To be able to bicycle places without having to worry about grave
physical injury just because someone wasn't paying attention behind
the wheel of their 2 ton, resource-wasting machine.
The Bay Area of California where I live, even though there are many
places with biking trails, is really terrible. None of these great
biking trails are integrated in any meaningful way with communities in
which people live. Here there is a terrible schism of pavement and
asphalt and places people shop, live, and work on the one hand and the
nice, idyllic trails that people mostly drive to on weekends to go
mountain biking or hiking. It is not good. With the outrageous
real-estate market conditions here I highly doubt that things could
ever be changed or improved because the forces of money will always be
greater than forces of reason.
But maybe there is hope in more rural areas. For example my parents
recently moved to the South and I have visited them there a couple of
times. Right around where they live there are lakes, farms, and
forests. Sadly none of it is connected in any meaningful way and much
of it is difficult to access. For example, the forest I go walking in
is surrounded by barbed-wire fence which only the deer can hop. Paths
that would connect two adjoining areas such as the lake and the forest
are idiotically blocked-off when new development happens. In
California this sort of blocked-off feature of many adjoining areas
due to ignorance and/or greed is a recurring theme. So many times
I've tried to find alternate routes on my bike away from the choking
congestion of cars on the main roads only to find dead ends. Many of
these dead-ends exists only because the people who built them weren't
creative enough to think of connecting two areas.
In Germany, there is a very different attitude about common areas.
You see these "Wanderwege" - wandering ways - that meander through the
farmland and then they go right past residential areas too. People
don't seem to mind at all that a trail goes past their house, through
their orchard, and along their corn fields. In fact, maybe it even
enriches where they live. This is a very different attitude than in
the US where I see barbed-wire fences all over the place and an gross
obsession with boundaries and private owner****p. When I used to take
the train to work every day I would pass lots which had razor-wire
fence around them. It is a blight on the landscape and a rather
depressing sight. It screams volumes about the dark ages which
permeate the mindsets of people here and how far we need to go.
I am all for a network of greenways. As obesity is reaching epidemic
pro****tions and millions of people feel more and more trapped in their
homes, their office cubicles, and cars they are yearning for places to
go. They are yearning to wonder and breath fresh air and pick apples
under the summer Sun. Yet they pay money on health club member****ps
and go inside smelly buildings under flourescent lights and work out
on iron machines. We need to build wandering ways here.
People pay the price for their views. If people are so intent on the
barriers and private-property, then they will be condemned to live
unhappily and lack the Sun and fresh air and live in a sickly state.
When they are ready to open up to a community that shares then they
will find solutions and ways of living that make sense.
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