There was another really good part in the podcast on alternative modes of travel that I was listening to the other day in which one of the speakers was noting that in many of the more suburban areas in Europe that she had visited, the speed limits were reduced to 30km/hour and high fines were imposed. Kids were then free to play in the streets without fear of cars speeding through them. However, what stood out to me the most was the way she described cars as guests in the streets.

What I have noticed in my day-to-day travels is that most drivers seem to feel a certain entitlement to the streets, as though it is by default their space and everyone else is an inconvenience to their needs. This mindset is ever expanding to the point where it is barely challenged; and, I assume many drivers would scoff at the idea that streets weren't made solely for their vehicles. But, as I have noted before, this is not the way it always was.

The thing I liked about this is that it's a relatively inexpensive infrastructure change to make. Smaller communities could easily make this change. In fact, with proper enforcement, it could be a bit of a money maker for a while as drivers get accustomed to this change. Of course drivers will bristle at this, but tackling car dependency is a major multisolving opportunity for us.

I was listening to a podcast recording of a panel on alternative modes of travel and one of the speakers brought up an interesting point on transit routes. They shared how transit companies have these goals to have transit stops within a certain proximity to a certain number of homes; however, rather than adding more routes they simply expand existing routes to more stops. The result is that bus routes end up being less direct and more time consuming as they wind through neighbourhoods in order to pass by more homes. This, of course, leaves transit feeling like a far less convenient alternative to car travel.

If we ever want to get serious about our car dependency we need to invest in alternatives in a way that makes them more compelling than driving ourselves. Nothing would boost transit more than sitting in traffic and watching busses move along quickly in their own direct and dedicated, congestion free lanes.

Reading an article this morning on the four day work week and how, separate from a worker right's movement, they just become an employment perk. The author, Oshan Jarow, notes,

"The deeper issue is that convincing companies to adopt four-day weeks does little to change the balance of power between workers and employers. Left unchanged, the negotiation over how many hours should constitute “full-time” would continue being held in the boardroom, where workers and their interests are largely without representation, and given today’s hampered labor movement, without much influence. That would significantly reduce the scope of our potential leisure time by leaving employers — rather than workers or an empowered labor movement — in virtually sole control of deciding when economic growth translates to more time off."

The main point behind the article is that we have stopped seeing productivity increases translating into more and better leisure time for workers; instead it has mostly just increased profit for employers. It also highlights the role and value of leisure time in our lives, something that the current capitalist system wants us to ignore. Rather than seeing the richness that leisure time can bring, we are increasingly asked to find value, meaning, and relationships in our work. Hustle culture was the previous incarnation of this. Now its the rise of solopreneurs and a sharper focus on company culture. These aren't bad in and of themselves, but they will never replace the meaning that good and frequent leisure time can provide.

We are in a time when people are increasingly cut off from their neighbours and surrounding communities, mental health crises are compounding, smart phones give us the ability to always be 'on,' and civic engagement is decreasing. Just as public space can be a physical solution to many of our problems, leisure time can a metaphysical one.

Something I've been thinking about a lot over the last year is the way our societal obsession with protecting private interests is spilling out into our public spaces and fundamentally damaging them.

A good example of this is the increased use of surveillance tech. As more and more people leverage it to protect their private assets, it has a negative ripple effect of eroding the public trust and hospitality of our neighbourhoods. I was confronted with this the other day as I walked past a house the other day and heard a loud, recorded voice call out, "smile, you are being recorded!" What stands out to me here is that I was on public property, the sidewalk, where I had every right to be. Yet, this individual's need to protect their private interests made that public space less hospitable. The private space spilling into the public and ultimately trying to claim it as its own. Heaven forbid I had decided to stand there for a while; a picture of me might have ended up on facebook labelled as a "suspicious individual."

It's sad to think of sidewalks going the way of streets before them, hijacked by private freedoms and interests to the point of no longer being truly inclusive spaces for everyone. But it is something I am reminded of whenever I see them covered in snow while the streets are cleanly plowed, or cars parked halfway across them to fit more vehicles in a driveway, or whenever I warn my kids to interrupt their play in order to make it their responsibility to pay attention to the massive SUVs and trucks that are backing out of their driveways across the sidewalks.

More on this to come I'm sure.

Happy New Year.

Yesterday I was walking my kids to the library and I had a thought around collective vs personal responsibility as it relates to safety. As the girls ran up ahead of me I considered how this is what parenting is, watching your kids exhibit freedom and move forward into the world in ways that will always be ahead of and beyond you. We're in the process of trying to decide when to start letting our kids walk to school on their own and a big part of that comes down to trust.

But the thing that struck me was that it's not only about trusting my kids to be safe, it's about trusting the community to keep my kids safe. To make this thought even more brazen, it is your responsibility to keep my kids safe. Just as it is my responsibility to keep other people's kids safe.

This is a mindset that I think we've really abandoned here in our neoliberal 'western' society. Here, one's wellbeing is primarily a personal concern. Watching out for one another, especially strangers, increasingly feels like a quaint, naive thing of the past. At best, we accept that there are certain structures in society (laws, systems, etc) that are designed to organize us in a way that keeps people safe. Yet, even those are often pushed back against in exchange for personal freedom. Our car-centric way of life is perhaps the best example of this. There are so many small steps we could take to make our streets safer, but we often reject these as they might interfere with our freedom of movement. And perhaps no one bears the burden of this more than kids.

But, coming back to this idea that kid's safety should be a collective responsibility. I think this is part of what fuels helicopter parenting. We simply don't trust that society will put our kid's wellbeing before their own freedom. So we adopt that mindset as well and our kids experience the world from the safety of their homes, backyards, and the backseat of cars. Never mind that this is having negative effects down the road.

I believe this is something we should reject and move away from. The old adage, 'it takes a village to raise a child' had it right. Kids should be seen moving around freely in our communities as though they belong there, not as a failure of parenting; because we should look at those kids and think it is my responsibility that they feel safe here.