Tonight’s walk-with-weight began at the Pet Supplies Plus at the northeast corner of Marsh and Forest, heading north on Marsh. Starting later than I wanted due to a frustrating coding problem resulted in less daylight than I would have preferred. So, photos from tonight mostly came within the first 15 minutes of the walk.
I know this is only the fourth route and all, but I’ve been consistently intrigued at what I’ve found in neighborhoods I wouldn’t have otherwise explored. Tonight was a mix of a torn-down-something-or-other, perhaps a school because I can’t figure out why a flag pole situation would be erected otherwise, a very-much-still-erect middle school I’ve never seen before (and a rather large one at that), and a friend walking his dog at dusk. And because I’m a social animal, this explains why my route doubled tonight when halfway through with my own walk — I joined my friend for the rest of his.
I passed by a small, older apartment complex near the beginning of my route with good vibes all around. It looked like it had its own community, and reminded me of other smaller apartment developments throughout Dallas. These apartments are very much unlike the enormous monstrosities that are typically built around DFW today, and exist as several two story buildings with several units in each building. I wondered what it was like to live there.
From everything I’ve read, it seems it would be beneficial to introduce small multi-family developments into neighborhoods currently zoned for single-family residential. We continue to tear down older single-family homes in order to build much larger, more expensive, modern versions of the same thing. For what purposes, other than creature comforts and increasing the tax base, I’m not entirely sure. It’s not like the number of members in single-family households is growing significantly larger to necessitate the increased size.
It seems multi-family developments would likely increase the tax base more than single-family re-developments, so the only reason I can think of why we can’t have nicer things collectively as a society is the NIMBY crowd’s fear of change and the unknown. This is shortsighted of course — re-building the same thing, only bigger and better, is beneficial only to an incredibly small number of people in a limited way. Continuing with this pattern contributes to ignoring both the benefits that come from slowly increasing population density in an area with a diverse set of housing options.
I would love to see more diversity of housing slowly introduced into neighborhoods full of single-family homes. Where are the duplexes? The four unit apartments? The missing middle, as they say.
And yes, I understand that adding these types of developments will likely increase the amount of cars on the properties and surrounding streets. At the same time, there are plenty of designs that nicely accomodate exactly this. I also find it funny that a culture so seemingly hell-bent on driving everywhere, is so fixated on cars parked along residential streets.
One of the two things I hear over and over in these conversations is that one, it would be great to be able to walk to places, and two, it would be great to have more places where we can hang out with friends and family. But until we increase population density in these areas, it’s difficult if not impossible to support the local retail that would give us these places to walk to where more people can hang out and commune together.
Instead, we continue to develop more of the same, increasing the sprawl that leaves us with really no other option than to drive everywhere and experience more cars than we would if we had more areas appropriately dense in population.
And at the same time, we can’t expect people to walk anywhere if our walkable paths are consistently designed in a manner that places pedestrians right next to vehicles weighing thousands of pounds that, with one wrong mistake, can instantly end our lives. But it’s not only that pedestrian routes are often poorly placed — it’s also true that they are often sprinkled with obstacles that make it difficult to navigate for any non-abled body.
Imagine if while driving that, instead of the obstacle-free roads we typically experience, you regularly come across some sort of roadblock without warning — maybe a huge piece of furniture in the middle of the road. It’s completely clear on the other side, but you can’t get your car through and the only options left are backtracking to find another way, or driving on the other side of the road against traffic until the obstacle is cleared. At best it’s annoying. This is what it’s like to walk through a lot of Dallas.
As it started to get dark, I found myself walking through the neighborhood behind a couple and their dog when I noticed a friend walking his own dog, coming my direction on the other side of the street. We talked about friends, his new job, public transit, and more. It was nice randomly catching up and rambling on together.
