I chose today to start riding the bike around instead of driving, which might not have been the best of ideas in light of the rain. But it turned out alright. I'm still calibrated to Austin as my mental geospatial system (and since I've been a GIS monkey for the last few months for City of Austin's NHCD, I default to the 1983 North American Datum coordinate system (!)). Austin is spatially condensed much more so than is Dallas. I could get all over the place on my bike down there. Even though I used my car a lot in the last year, I was almost entirely on my bike last fall.
But Dallas is a little different. Like, it's way huger than Austin. At least, that's the way it feels right now. In Austin, I could get to four or five different coffeeshops within a reasonable radius (Flightpath, Tazza Fresca, Bennu, Cherrywood, and hell, even Starbucks). So far in Dallas, I can get to Legal Grounds, a Starbucks, and The Pearl Cup without too much effort (although Legal Grounds has some pretty spotty wifi, an unforgivable sin for a coffeeshop! Although that's a whole different subject, isn't it about time that any coffeeshop or institution that is designed for people to linger for even a little bit have internet?).
The coffeeshop is my personal litmus test for live-ability. I don't even like coffee very much. Coffeeshops might be private businesses, but they are de facto public spaces, spaces where people can mix, mingle, work, read, learn, talk, and more. Maybe I'd feel differently if I was a 9-5 office warrior, but at the moment, and for the past three or four years, I've been of the opinion that spots that offer a lot of diverse functions are where I like to be.
Brooklyn was the first place where I really understood on a fundamental level how urban layouts and infrastructure dictate how people live. Maybe NYC is giant, but its subway and bus system make the whole place accessible. Austin has a much less comprehensive public transit system, but it was physically smaller as well, upping its overall accessibility.
Of course, since I'm talking accessibility, I'd be remiss if I didn't refer to some of its components- specifically, housing and transportation. I already used transportation as an argument for accessibility in Brooklyn. The Housing and Transportation Affordability Index, although framed for "affordability" discussions, mostly by affordable housing advocates and groups, gets at what I'm talking about.
People can access first what's in close proximity to their homes, i.e. their neighborhoods. From where they live, people can walk to spots nearby. As amenities and desired places get farther away, they become less accessible by foot, and require more powerful modes of transportation- most often, cars. You could easily begin to build a mental map of your personal "accessible regions"- the radius that is walk-accessible, the radius that is car-accessible, the one that's mass-transit-accessible, et cetera.
Before moving to Brooklyn, I had only dim notions of any other radii than walk- and car-accessibility. I did bike some in Atlanta, but not really seriously as a mode of legitimate transportation; it was mostly for recreation. Living in Brooklyn, I was car-less for the first time. The subway system would pop me up like the mole game into different points in the city, and from each of those points, I developed a walk-radius. This situation- lots of walk-radii anchored at multiple subway station epicenters- was my mental map.
Moving back to Texas two years ago, I had some shock getting from one map to another. But eventually, I built a new one, featuring feet, bike, and car as the effective modes. There were enough facilities/shops/locations within my feasible walkable space to maintain it as a mode to consider. The same went for bike and car.
Growing up, I never thought of Dallas proper as sprawling. I knew that the suburbs stretched for miles, but my neighborhood and day-to-day "world" didn't feel unwieldy. Coming back to it, it feels massive, and in trying to recalibrate my walk-, bike-, and car-radii, I'm finding it harder to populate my walk- and bike-radii with places to go. Especially the walk-radii, there ain't much. Being forced to drive feels strangulating.
Nonetheless, I am going to maintain my bike-radius as a viable option. Today was day one. And it went pretty well. It will develop more and more.
Ain't this rambling?
Lastly, I'm posting a picture that I just really enjoy. Therese Frare took some pictures that appeared in TIME in 1990. The arguably most famous picture is of the dying David Kirby. He died of AIDS in 1990. His caretaker during his dying days, besides his parents, was a man named Peta, who himself died of AIDS in 1992:
Beautiful.
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