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Saved by 2 people (0 private), first by anonymouse user on 2007-12-15


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After the many seductions, logical and visionary, have been played—I shall make a plea for the salvific aspect of the act of walking. Yes, salvific. Not just to save the environment, but to save ourselves, and not just by regarding the environment. We will not save the environment until we have found a reason for living together. Until we discover civic care in each other, until we restore the city to its definition as a place of unexpected intimacies, not just as a place of amenities, convenience, business, and entertainment, we will not have sustainability. For sustainability is about replacing an ethic of entitlement with an ethic of sufficiency. And sufficiency is what we find in each other.

Highlighted by lampertina

It is not cars that are the enemy of the pedestrian. The enemy is the absence of civic communion, the lack of empathic citizenship, our inability to see cohabitation as that place where we enjoy ourselves, by enjoying others. All human traffic is under siege, because it is becoming increasingly purposed, guarded, and negotiated. The body is not just a means of locomotion. It is our chief means of restoring a city to its raison d’être, its purpose. And that purpose is civil encounter.

Highlighted by lampertina

The problem is to make people aware that anonymity is as toxic to the ecology of heart as hydrocarbons are toxic to the atmosphere.

Highlighted by lampertina

The problem is how to restore intimacy, curiosity, trust, and play into the happenstance encounter of citizens, in an era when the happenstance and the unpredictable are a threat.

Highlighted by lampertina