For those of you who are new to Granola: I often try to send out a mid-month email with compiled reader responses and comments. This enables me to share excerpted responses received via email, in the Substack comments, or elsewhere on the web. It also hopefully emphasizes the fact that this Substack is meant to cultivate community, and that readers are encouraged to guide and direct conversations.
I am so grateful for all your amazing messages in response to my July 1 newsletter. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts! I’ve excerpted as many as I can below. Feel free to keep the conversation going in the comments.
“We're entering year six of living in our small town, specifically near the town square, particularly because of its walkability. It changes everything. After traveling all over the place and living in all sorts of environments, from rural acreage to megacities, we've decided that small, walkable towns are where it's at because for us, they make us more human, more who we're made to be. Most of human history has been lived at three miles per hour, and cars deprive us of that pace. The walkable lifestyle is unmatchable.”
— Tsh
“I'm trying a summer without a car and have been mostly biking but sometimes walking. I live in a college town that has put a lot of money into making the town safe for cyclists and pedestrians, and to be candid, utilizing the paths and bike lanes more frequently has made me less bitter about paying the higher taxes to live within city limits! It takes more time and I am much sweatier when arriving at my destination, but it's been a nice experiment and something I hope to continue as much as I can through the Ohio seasons. It also helps with easing my gas consumption, which is a small way to ease my dependence on oil and save a few dollars in my budget each month.”
— Grace
“Just yesterday my wife had three of our kids running errands and I decided to do a short outing with our four-year-old. So we took the bus. As we waited for the bus, I was struck by the fact that there are so few moments many of us have in which we aren’t expected to be doing something or focusing our attention on something: When you commute places by car, your attention during the commute is necessarily focused on driving. And when you have arrived at your destination or are back home, there’s always something (and usually several somethings) that need your attention. But yesterday while we sat at the bus stop waiting, I just looked around at downtown Lincoln—you’ll become far more aware of your home place if you drive less and rely far more on walking and public transit—while Austin sat nearby playing with a small diecast car.
Something similar happens on the bus, of course: You don’t need to pay attention to the road. If you know when you need to get off, then you can just sit and wait, not thinking about anything in particular or doing any particular work during that time. … Austin got to see a bunch of people and overhear conversations he wouldn’t have in our van. He also had to walk what was for him a long way from the bus stop to the stores we were visiting on our outing.
The other thing I’ve enjoyed with using mass transit, this is more when I’m just going somewhere by myself, is that the Lincoln bus schedule imposes certain constraints on my schedule. If you’re a writer and editor, it can be very hard to stop working because, well, you’re always turning over ideas in your head, either pieces you want to write or ideas for how to improve something you’re editing. And because this work is all mental, it’s work you can do basically anywhere at any time. Thus all the stereotypes about absent-minded writers. Work from home, which I love in so many other ways, can also play into this problem: It can be easy for work to just take over every spare moment in your day. The other problem is that when work can take over every moment, it’s easier for it to actually take over every moment because you feel like there is always time to do a bit more.
What’s nice about taking the bus somewhere to work is that I have to be mindful of the time, I need to stop work at a certain time, and then I’ll have that short time of not working while I wait for and then ride the bus home.”
— Jake Meador, in “Car-Free With Kids”
“My husband and I have a car, but I don't have a driver's license and we both strive to use the car as little as possible (to varying degrees of success). We're lucky to live in a supremely walkable and bikable college town (with a fareless bus system) and the mild-ish weather of the PNW. … Interestingly, on our corner we are surrounded by two carless households and one family that splits their transportation pretty evenly between a car and bicycles (taking their young son around in a burley or a tandem bike attachment). This makes us all more dependent on each other—my husband is asked to give others a ride when they need to haul furniture or make a short trip out of town; we offer to pick up groceries for each other when making an errand run; we borrow tools rather than buy our own because foregoing the convenience of a car incentivizes you to avoid trips across town whenever you can. And we know the people around us. … We see our neighbors and they see us sitting on our porches and working on our yards; car-less garages get used as indoor/outdoor spaces to relax and work and exercise when we'd otherwise be holed up inside.”
— Eric
“We live in Prague and for the first time since our children (2 and 6 months) were born, we are back in the States…. We have noticed that drivers here often don’t notice pedestrians, which can be extra dangerous because when cities are designed here, at least where we are, cars are prioritized. In Prague, it is different. I can walk out into a crosswalk knowing that the driver of the oncoming car will recognize that I have the right of way and stop. The city is also undergoing efforts to make what is already a pedestrian-friendly city even friendlier. … [In Prague,] My wife daily visits the playground with our kids, which is a five minute walk, and she sees her friends and with their kids who also walked there. They met simply through being at the playground. I go around the corner to the pub to watch hockey or soccer, with friends, and usually one of my kids tagging along. Our church is less than a 10 minute walk, and most of our groceries we get in the neighborhood as well. Every single day we see the same people, who are also walking.
… While we are in the States, we have to be much more intentional if we want to see people and plans have to be more firmly set. All of that said, the air conditioning and the ability to go somewhere with the kids, without having to think through the tram timetables to make sure we get back for bedtime, has been quite a relief. I can see positives and negatives to both sides, but I definitely prefer the walking plus public transit option over reliance on a car.”
— Jeremy
“A few years ago we moved from a more densely populated suburb/university town to a traditional suburb. I do miss being able to walk and bike to more places, and making those random connections with people you know. But we’re lucky to live near a park with a pond and walking/biking lanes going through it that make biking to the library and a variety of playgrounds with my 3-year-old fun and easy—which isn't the case for many suburban families.”
— Chad
“We moved last year from a city where we lived in a very walkable neighbourhood (that also had great transit and bike lanes) to a city where we’re forced to be mostly car-reliant (most of the residential streets around our home don't even have proper sidewalks for casual strolls, let alone commuting on foot!). I've really felt the difference in how I relate to my environment and how much like “home” the city does or doesn't feel to me. When we lived without a car, I felt such a deep sense of connection to the city—I knew it in a way that I had never known previously places where I'd lived with a car—and in this new city, even a year later I still don't quite think of any of these places as “mine.” There are some great benefits to having a car (like being able to buy the cheaper 10 lb. bag of potatoes when I'm doing groceries without having to think about how I'll carry everything home, or having the opportunity to explore places that are farther away), but I'd trade those for the sense of deep connection to place and community that walking offers.”
— Heidi
“My eldest son, 19, is an avid skateboarder. He has used his skateboard for both transportation and recreation for 10 years. He knows the streets, happenings, people and buildings in Boise like no one else in the family. He wrote his college entrance essay about how these daily observations and interactions have influenced his chosen area of study and his vision of community. I admire your family’s choice to live car free with little kids.”
— Julia