A Slice of the City – Pedestrian Thoughts

From the steps of the Metropolitan Museum, I look straight down 82nd Street to the East River. A slice of the city is laid out before me. It surrounds me here at the steps of the Metropolitan, where people cluster to regroup and pause after experiencing the dizzying effects of the art of the ages inside the museum. It’s down there at the other end of 82nd, where there are benches lined up along the river’s edge where people watch the watery corridor of tugboats, barges, tourist ferries, and water taxis. It’s all along the way in between, in the outside space found between the two opposing walls of buildings, along its well-traveled corridor alive with pedestrians and vehicles.

On 82nd Street and its dissecting avenues are several shoe repair shops, where business is brisk in the manner that tire shops stay busy in most other towns. The average New Yorker doesn’t own a car and walks about five miles of city streets a day, far above the national average.

Like drivers in their cars, its worth remembering that pedestrians also have their destinations to get to. However, leg power, unlike fossil fuels, must come from our direct human physical effort. And the more engaging and interesting that the passing people, places, and things are that we see, the less concerned we become with the shear effort it takes to walk to our destination.

In urban planning, the field in which I work, traffic planners continuously study and model all matter of vehicle flows, hoping to accurately predict the impact of new development for designing the community infrastructure upgrades that will carry the new load. The phenomena of vehicular traffic flows, as the traffic planners understand it, is similar to that of water always seeking a level of equilibrium.

Putting their observation in more personal terms, it means, as a driver I tend to be focused on seeking and positioning myself in that equilibrium. The act of driving is inconsistent with any distractions that hinder my goal to reach my destination.

Consequently, put me a vast field of asphalt at a large suburban shopping center, and I just might drive the short distance to the store located more than a 5-minute walk away. However, fill that barren parking lot with a grid of urbanism and I’ll likely choose to walk the distance. Therein is the difference between the internal driver and the internal pedestrian within me: as driver I must avoid distractions at hand, while as pedestrian I will seek out to observe and, on occasion, interact with the minute particulars of passing street life.

In New York, when I ride the bus or subway I still remain in my pedestrian mode, a pedestrian riding among fellow pedestrians on the public wheels. City life is felt and experienced as we go from place to place, whether on foot or public transportation.

However, when I’m walking down the street with a cell phone to my ear, hearing a voice nobody else can hear, I feel more like I’m in driver mode: destination oriented, my multi-tasked operation with my communication machine saps what’s left of my attention span. I’m focused on avoiding run-ins with other pedestrians and crossing traffic, blocking out the rest of it around me, missing slices of the city that differentiates being here from anywhere else.