❓ When did you first experience proximity to diverse local amenities, services and spaces as a value in your urban lifestyle?
💛 I experienced glimpses of this value on my summer childhood visits to the southern Swedish city of Malmö, where, unlike at home in our car-dependent southern Californian lifestyle, we would often rely on foot and public transit to move around the suburbs and city.
💡 Those summer family holidays left a big impression on my value system- something I didn’t even realize clearly until much later in life.
However, it was in Seattle in my early 20’s that I experienced a walkable urban lifestyle as a daily reality for the first time.
After getting my BA, I moved to this Pacific Northwest city and was quite immediately taken with my new lifestyle. I had two jobs, one of which I could walk to, right in the neighborhood, and the other which I took a bus too. I couldn’t afford to buy a car, but I also didn’t want or need one.
🧺 I had multiple grocery options within a 10-15 minute walk from my home and quite gloriously, a fabulous weekly farmers market (from Spring through Autumn) that set up right in the parking lot next to my apartment building each weekend
This is where my love of urbanism and mobility really began to take shape (also, photography….)
🚶🏽♀️ 🚍 I loved being able to either walk or take the bus to work and also the fact that these were ‘everyday modes’ for people in these neighborhoods & not stigmatized.
I ended up having more chapters of life in different places that led me to understanding the value of proximity in my local life- most notably, years later in a central Swedish city where, as a mother to two young children, I quietly thrilled in having a lifestyle where everything I needed was within a 15-minute walk.
It was in this city that I also learned about the 15-minute city concept in 2020 and was fascinated as I knew from experience the value of this type of lifestyle and the benefit it could bring in urban transformation.
📖 In the book ‘The 15-Minute City: A Solution to Saving Our Time & Our Planet’, author Carlos Moreno writes that the 15-minute city and the 30-minute territory ‘…..invite us to rethink the way we live; to value proximity, community, and sustainability; and to create livable cities for current and future generations.’
💭 💭 💭 When did you experience proximity in urban life for the first time?
A bit of storytelling below on the above experiences and roots of Pedestrian Space at link below: