[p2p-research] Walkability: check it before choosing your next home!

[M. Fioretti]

On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 09:26:48 AM -0400, Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
>> "Walkability is a characteristic of homes and apartments that all
>> their owners, or everybody considering (even in these times) buying
>> a new house should know and think about."
>> Full text (please don't overlook the terms of use) at
>> http://stop.zona-m.net/livingworld/walkability-check-it-choosing-your-next-home
>
> With rising populations, there is a need to build new cities. How
> about a new city in the USA designed for walkability? Or other
> aspects of "sustainability"? Might even be "profitable" for someone
> with billions of dollars to build one.

Paul,

many thanks for all the comments and reference material. I want to
cover these themes again on Stop!, so I'll certainly use them in the
future. Here and now, I would only highlight one background aspect of
your reply (NOT as a critic, just as food for everybody's thought)

most of what you said is only valid, applicable or otherwise an issue
in the USA and only there, because North America has screwed itself up
so badly with zoning and urban sprawl. Or maybe in China/Asia, but
there I really don't know. In Italy and most of Europe there is no
rising populations (even considering immigration, if you look more
than a decade ahead). And many, many cities here would be perfectly
walkable as they are, if we just managed to:

- kick cars out of the streets (there are so many cars that eventually
  it takes less time to drive than wait for a bus, which is less
  comfortable and slowed down by cars parked in the middle of the
  street; and driving becomes even healthier and safer, especially if
  moving with kids, than breathing smog and slaloming by feet among
  cars as a pedestrian)

- reorganize work hours, public services and public transportation so
  that they all work in harmony, rather than each against the others.

European cities have been walkable since the Roman Empire. Today in
Italy, and I'm sure in most of Europe, there is no need to build new
cities. Besides, there is NO space anymore, if one cares even a little
bit about the environment, local food production and similar issues.

Here we need to make empty apartments available on the rental market,
and above all slowly REBUILD /SUBSTITUTE what already exist. Last year
there was a report saying most public schools buildings are unsafe
because too old. A plan to rebuild all of them, a few every year,
INSTEAD of building new homes or whole new cities nobody knows where,
would keep all the building industry busy for decades.

But they (industry and politicians) prefer to keep lobbying for new
residential buildings permits, or dumb huge projects like the Messina
Bridge, because it is easier and less tiring to make money in ways you
already know (even if they are harmful in the long term) than try new
ones.
	Marco
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