tandempower

Biking through a major Florida city, it is striking how different it is to experience the landscape by bike than by driving. Highway interchanges that seem like nothing more from above than a series of lane-changes to follow signs turn out to be a strange labrynth of MUPs, sidewalks, local streets, and commercial and industrial buildings below. At ground level, overpasses are huge roof structures suspended on massive columns; good for shade or shelter from the rain, albeit noisy. The waste of space is striking, but it stimulates the imagination for what could be done with that space. Obviously someone imagined a MUP or it wouldn't be there today. Perhaps the land around the MUP could be filled in with a nursery of potted trees, to be planted around the city as they grow.

When you zoom in to the level of the pixels on a computer screen, the pixels are nothing more than solid colored squares in whatever selection of colors the monitor is set to display. Nature is different. Each pixel turns out to itself be pixelated with countless organic forms and structures that make it up. Microscopes don't do justice to this phenomenon because you can't be physically present at the scale of a microscope, let alone move through the landscapes in three dimensions. To experience a smaller scale of reality directly, you have to slow down. Sometimes what you see is not pretty. Biking on a highway may reveal that the pavement is rougher than you could ever imagine from inside a speeding car. On the other hand, you may experience vantage points, objects, and landscapes in a way you didn't realize exist from the familiar perspective of a motor vehicle. Either way, the experience is different - it's another dimension!

Roody

When I say my rust belt city is beautiful, people who always drive scoff at me. True, the big 4 to 6 lane streets bordered by endless parking lots are quite ugly. But the smaller streets and residential areas, and some of the centrally located business districts, are all quite beautiful. But you rarely see the beauty if you drive everywhere.

It's not surprising that people feel no civic pride when they can't even see how nice their city really is!

Walter S

Quite true. I see the same thing around Atlanta. The main thoroughfares often look very industrial and ugly. Get just a block off the main route though and you find nice residential areas and parks, schools, small stores, etc. It's just a very different environment not 500 feet away.

crankythunder

I agree with Roody!

The Lansing River trail is awesome, the new pathways out in Haslett are great, and the various commercial districts around town are fun. Lansing is a hidden gem in plain sight.

Regards,
Crankster

1989Pre 

Planting more trees is always a positive and enduring plan, both on a practical and aesthetic level. www.arborday.org can help any town or city that wants to be more "tree-friendly". Does your city have what it takes to be a Tree City?
Tand, I want to thank you for your expansive and revealing look at how our perceptions can either thwart or enhance our future.

Ekdog

Yes! More trees lead to lower temperatures in summer, too, and "agrihoods" provide folks with high-quality produce to eat as well as a sense of community.

Urban gardens can do more for Detroit than grow produce | Michigan Radio

Ekdog

I often travel by train in the Algarve region of Portugal with my trusty Brompton by my side. The train passes through older neighborhoods that have a much different feel to them than the ones that have grown up around the motorway, much more laid back, quieter and cleaner.

1989Pre 

I think that when the more "imitative" segment of our society sees that converting away from fossil fuel and embracing a green lifestyle does not have to mean less "prosperity", they will probably stop complaining about us trying to save their hides.
The under-passes that Tand spoke of could be shady rest stops, with benches and possibly a water source. Even landscapers could be employed to construct flowing fountains, running down the diagonal bridge supports. Shade-loving ornamental and edible plants could be grown in such a scenario; ferns, ivies, even fungi.
With projected ambient temperatures expected to rise, world-wide, how important would these under-pass oases prove? What I propose is elementary: There are much more creative thinkers than I, who could help turn our thoroughfares, both large and small, into areas that are healthful, aesthetic and welcoming.
The enhancement to the local, potential tourist markets would be immeasureable. Cycling is big business, now, and is increasing, especially in regards to "normal" cyclists, who are not interested in riding 50-60M. "Sunday riders" everywhere would love to see their towns' and cities' roads made more life-enhancing.
Perhaps another idea is to offer Free Ride stations, where drivers who have never been on a bicycle, or simply would like to see if they "still have it in them", could, perhaps on Sunday, pull in to the station (maybe a park) and are issued a loaner bike to ride alongside a trained cyclist for perhaps 15-30 minutes, to see just how different and wondrous the world can become when one is not encased in steel and glass.

I-Like-To-Bike

The Fifth Dimension sang all about it many years ago:

Aquarius Lyrics


When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius
Age of Aquarius
Aquarius!
Aquarius!

Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind's true liberation
Aquarius!
Aquarius!

When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius
Age of Aquarius
Aquarius!
Aquarius!
Aquarius!
Aquarius!

Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in, the sunshine in
Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in, the sunshine in
Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in, the sunshine in

Songwriters
MAC DERMOT, GALT/RADO, JAMES/RAGNI, GEROME /

wolfchild

One time I've entered a 7th dimension, while riding my bicycle and listening to the music of wind blowing through the trees.

tandempower

Posts nine and 10 should be deleted before they take this thread into the dark energy dimension

mconlonx

Walter S

Biking, walking, and driving are all radically different as far as the experience and mental state that I have during the activity. It is virtually like being in a completely different place if you drive up a road in a car versus ride the road on a bicycle or walk up that same road. You might as well be in a completely different place.

When your mind needs a bike ride, it needs a bike ride. When you need to take a walk, you need a walk. I guess then that when you need to go for a drive, you go for a drive (somehow I get along fine without this one)

Roody

So true. I can enjoy a nice drive in the country for sure. I also used to love cross-country road trips. But for me it's not worth the hassle of keeping a car just for an occasional drive. The bike and walking are more my speed.

Dahon.Steve

+1

Hyper-mobility causes you to miss practically everything and see very little. The OP appreciates the super-structures created for the motorist from a different perspective. In a sense, everything has it's beauty.

The reason people backpack is to see the world at 2 miles per hour.

wolfchild

I don't think majority of people would be able to get to work on time traveling at 2 miles per hour.

Walter S

What would we do without your insight?

ro-monster

I ride my bike or walk to work. (It's 2 or 3 miles, depending on which route I take.) My commute is one of the nicest parts of my day; I can use a path through wetlands and see egrets, herons, and ducks; I can watch the sunrise. Tandempower is right about things looking vastly different from another perspective. There's even a noticeable difference between biking and walking.

Yet people at work are always trying to get me to carpool with co-workers (two of them live across the street from me so it would be easy enough to do). They don't seem capable of understanding that someone would choose not to go by car if that was available to them. After years of biking and walking, I find that I've come to really dislike riding in cars; not only is it stressful, but it distances you from your surroundings, and I find that sense of muted experience and isolation disturbing now.

Walter S

And people may take it personally when you don't want to ride with them.

cooker

Some of you will remember a year or two ago I decided to ride every street in defined area between my house and work, and I saw all kinds of cool stuff. It would have been much less feasible by car due to difficulties negotiating turns on and off busy streets in rush hour and traffic restrictions, and much less interesting because you don't have as much time to take in details of people's gardens or building architecture or park artwork and so on.

cooker

They live two miles from work and always drive? That's too bad for them.

ro-monster

Yeah.

Roody

Where I used to work, I could commute along three lakes and two rivers without leaving the city limits and adding only a couple miles to my 4 mile commute. My motorist friends could never figure out how I did that! Nobody really knows their local geography unless they do a fair amount of cycling and walking.

Beneficial Ear

The journey is so much more appreciable when self-powered.
It is profound - to take the power from a foreign source, at *incredible* peril, and use it exclusively to transport oneself over any distance beyond the confines of "home". The ills of this demand grow external as well as internal...
We can clearly see the suffering brought by the sedentary lifestyle, we can clearly see how much of this valuable journey (life...) people are missing by demanding (at any cost) the express route from A to B

Roody

Very well put. But I notice your sig says">>>goal - 25 miles in one hour<<<
". So I guess there's more to the story?