I am someone who needs to feel the sun on my face daily, or else I’ll feel off the whole day. So, last Saturday, like any other day, I laced up my shoes and went for a walk. However, there was one slight problem— the biggest snowstorm of the year had occurred the night before.
Only a few households in my neighbourhood had shovelled their sidewalks, and I had made the unwise decision of wearing trail runners. So, I leapt over the gutter-turned-river and started my walk on the road.
As I walked alongside the massive snowbanks, I waved “hello” to many of my neighbours doing the same— people were running, walking their dogs, and even pushing strollers on the road because the sidewalks weren’t clear. The snowstorm caused most drivers to stay home that day, so the number of vehicles on the road was minimal, and even the odd car still had room to pass pedestrians safely. I was happily reminded of a Dutch urban planning concept called Autoluw.
Autoluw directly translates to “low-traffic”, but it is better interpreted as “nearly car-free.” It is a theory that prioritizes pedestrians and cyclists over drivers, while still ensuring that necessary automobiles, like emergency vehicles or delivery trucks (or snowploughs!), can get through. Last Saturday, my entire neighbourhood unintentionally followed this principle, and it was miraculous. Everyone I encountered on the road was grinning from ear to ear, and even the homeowners condemned to laborious shovelling greeted me as I walked by.
Road walking felt so much more communal than the sidewalk version, perhaps because we pedestrians were allowed onto the road itself, instead of being shoved to the sides. I felt a strange sense of camaraderie— we walked on the road together, however separate our destinations may have been. Walking on the road made me feel like my neighbourhood was meant for me, a person, and not a giant, insentient, two-ton metal box. Shouldn’t that be the case everywhere? Neighbourhoods built for people, and not for cars?
Car-centric design is commonplace in most North American suburban communities, especially in Etobicoke. Some neighbourhoods are so inconvenient for pedestrians that one simply needs a car to get around, fueling a myriad of issues ranging from spatially-oblivious children to socioeconomic inequality. Planning is politics, after all.
So, what can we learn from Friday’s snowstorm?
Now that we know that pedestrian commutability trumps all, we can adapt to a city where people are the main priority, instead of cars. Reliable and equitable public transit, safe infrastructure, and changes in public policy are all avenues to a less car-centric city, but let’s start small, with pedestrian infrastructure. Let’s add sidewalks where there are none, and improve the ones that already exist. Let’s expand the pedestrian head start, so the most vulnerable members of our community can cross the street safely. Let’s reclaim our neighbourhoods from the cars!
Think of it not as limiting automotive access, but expanding pedestrian access— or rather, human access.
I started my walk grumbling to myself about my neighbours not upholding their civic duty, and I ended it wide-eyed and rosy-cheeked, brimming with joy over the realization that maybe there is a way for Suburban Etobicoke to relinquish its car-centric design. In an age of “fifteen-minute city”-based political hysteria, we must warm our hearts (and our legs) to the future— walkable communities for all.