i have a weird kinda luck in this pandemic. we live in a walkable and inviting neighborhood in a city and state culture that is all about driving. so i get to walk everywhere with very little social threat. in my sub culture, highly educated green urban dwellers, we like to walk anyway. in the culture of the city of sacramento, most people don’t walk for fun or recreation in the city nor do they take public transit. i have friends who if i suggest we walk three blocks from a restaurant to a theater look at me like i’m out of my mind. i have friends, mostly in the suburbs of this city, who if they “walk,” its because they drove somewhere to take a “walk.” they likely didn’t head out their door.
a block from our house is a beautiful park with huge trees, a lake with ducks and geese, a large walking path around it and big green spaces between paths. on a gorgeous weekday, i can spot maybe a total of 20 people spread out over the whole of this ten square block park. if you do the math, that’s an average of two people per square block, talk about social distancing.
my relative ease in getting outside without endangering myself is partly cultural and partly urban density. sacramento is a sprawling city of around 500,000 people. the cities with the most walking culture tend to have a lot more people per square mile—not by coincidence of course. for example, in san francisco where our daughter lives or portland, oregon or seattle, washington where we have many friends, the culture is pretty walky walky. for years i have gone on “telephone” walks (where we walk as we talk) with friends in those cities. now when we do so, the crowds on the streets in those cities are such that they often round a corner, say “nope” and turn in another direction. sometimes they can barely find a safe place to walk. that basically never happens to me. can’t even imagine trying to go for a walk in manhattan where the crowds on the street were already daunting while people felt comfortable using public transit.
so today i have deep gratitude for living in a sane state (with a competent caring governor gavin newsom) in a sane city (with a competent caring mayor darrell steinberg) where it is beautiful and safe to walk, but relatively few people do.
