After an hour-long playdate at home (it’s Autumn school break where I live) with a schoolmate who lives just under a 15-minute walk from us, I walked with my daughter to our local neighbourhood market.
As we crossed the street, we passed one of the ladies who works at our favourite vegetable shop in the market. We nodded and smiled at each other in passing and said hello. My daughter was brimming with excitement – ‘We know her from the veggie store!’ A moment later, still riding this jubilant recognition of neighbourhood life, she beamed, ‘Most of my friends live here!’.
More on ‘Motherhood & Mobility’ reflections here
While I value a local, walkable urban lifestyle, my family has not had that through every chapter of life. We’ve had some extremely car-dependent chapters as well as some extremely walkable ones. We’ve had chapters where my kids had local neighbourhood friends and chapters where they have none.
While some people get uncomfortable when you start to bridge personal experience with research activity, I will always value the role that lived experience has played not only in my research motivations but also in my activities at Pedestrian Space, an NGO I founded a few years ago.
But I also know the impact of stories and sharing lived experiences and tales from daily life as part of the paradigm-shifting content we really need.
Holding my daughter’s hand while on a 5-minute walk to the market, hearing her reflect on all the good stuff about truly vibrant neighbourhood life (‘Most of my friends live here!’) is really ‘it’ for me.
~Annika @pedestrianspace