Season 2 of 'Do The Thing' begins with a book review!
Annnnnnd we’re back! We took a little break from recording because, well, we felt like it. That’s the great thing about doing your own thing. I know you were all anxiously awaiting another episode, so I’m happy to say your wait is officially over.
We've referenced the book Happy City a couple times in the past but this is our first "book review."
There are several quotes that stand out in addition to the two I mentioned during the podcast. Here are a few of my favorites:
As much as we complain about other people, there is nothing worse for mental health than a social desert. A study of Swiss cities found that psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia, are most common in neighborhoods with the thinnest social networks. Social isolation just may be the greatest environmental hazard of city living—worse than noise, pollution, or even crowding. The more connected we are with family and community, the less likely we are to experience colds, heart attacks, strokes, cancer, and depression. Simple friendships with other people in one’s neighborhood are some of the best salves for stress during hard economic times—in fact, sociologists have found that when adults keep these friendships, their kids are better insulated from the effects of their parents’ stress. Connected people sleep better at night. They are more able to tackle adversity. They live longer. They consistently report being happier.
Partly because sprawl has forced Americans to drive farther and farther in the course of every day, per capita road death rates in the United States hover around forty thousand per year. That’s a third more people than are killed by guns. It’s more than ten times the number of people killed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
result from living in communities that force people to drive. Just living in a sprawling city has the effect of four years of aging.
Additionally, we mentioned a speech Mika gave recently to a transportation coalition in Baton Rouge. Here’s the transcript of what he said. He has some fantastic points that I never considered before. Don’t tell him I told you that. He’ll get a big head.
My name is Mika Torkkola. I live in Helsinki, Finland as of about two years ago, but before that I lived in Baton Rouge for twelve years - during which time I commuted exclusively by bike - and before that I’ve also spent big chunks of my life in Australia, New Zealand, and Germany. During my time I’ve seen a bunch of different ways that people travel and get around, and I wanted to reflect on one of the paradoxes of how people TEND to do that, in most of the US.
So if I were to put up a picture of the American flag, right now, and ask people to list some of the words that come to mind, then, in the very top few words you’d surely find the word ‘freedom’. You hear that all the time from people in America, how much they love their freedom, how much they’re willing to do for it. You see it plainly in everyday life, ranging from people doing crazy things like open carrying weapons, or refusing to wear masks - to more normal things like choosing how and where to educate their children, who to vote for, and what church they go to. In short, freedom good! Everybody agrees!
This freedom extends, in principle, to how people choose to get around. In America you can choose between more types, makes, and models of cars than anywhere else in the world. You can have expensive cars and fast cars, small and efficient ones, hybrids, teslas, trucks, vans - everything in between. And with those come the highways and interstate infrastructure to match. I sometimes joke to my friends in Finland that when I lived in Baton Rouge we would regularly drive to visit my wife’s family in Texas - it’s ‘only’ 7 hours drive away. For us, that’s ‘normal’.
But this freedom comes at a price. In exchange for the supposed freedom that a car offers, people who live in America, in large, give up a much more significant freedom - the freedom to actually choose how you get around.
Think about this for a second. If you’re home today in Baton Rouge, how many different options do you have, say, for getting to the office? You certainly have your car, but unless you’re brave, or weird, or poor, you’re pretty unlikely to decide to walk, bike, or catch a bus to the office - without even considering if those options are actually available to you. Like most people in Baton Rouge, you’ll probably drive, and you’ll do it without even realizing that you didn’t even get to have a say in that decision. You only had once choice, to drive. That’s not freedom at all.
To illustrate what I think true freedom looks like, let me tell you about some of the ways that I can choose to get around in Helsinki. Of course, I can walk, or bike - there’s plenty of facilities for those. Those facilities are shared, with among other things, e-bikes, roller-bladers, even small scooters. Then there’s your public transportation. Depending on where I’m going, I can choose a bus, a train, a metro, a tram, or even a ferry - and I get my ticket through an app on my phone - they’re all operated under the same service. And finally, if I so choose, I can use a car, and - bonus - if I do use a car the traffic here isn’t even too bad because there’s so many people getting around by other means!
Helsinki isn’t some giant metropolis, by the way - it’s about twice the size of Baton Rouge. In many parts of the world this kind of choice I’m talking about is normal, and it’s even normal in some cities in the US - you probably know what they are...So what does all this choice mean? It sounds great, but does it necessarily mean freedom? What do the stats say? The public transportation here is world class, so people use it, of course - about half of all people commute via some form of transit. The rest are split pretty evenly between ‘active’ transportation - biking/walking, or the like - and driving.
And with all of this freedom to choose how you get around, comes a bunch of other freedoms. You can choose to live further away, with the bigger house and yard and all that, and drive, or catch a train, or what have you. Or you can live close by, forego the car - walk, bike, or take transit around town. And given actual choices - not the illusion of them - it turns out that people tend to choose to live how they actually want to, not how they have to. And when people truly get to live where and how they want to, they’re happier, more physically active, more socially engaged, and even kinder!
So I urge you all to think about walking, biking, transit, not as things that we have to make good because some people have to use them, but as things that we have to make good because people want to use them - even if they don’t know it yet. I promise that if you do it right, then ten years from now the people who were against it will be coming up to you to tell you ‘I’ve been saying we needed this for years!’.
Baton Rouge will probably never be like most of these cities I’m talking about, and that’s okay - but it wouldn’t take too much just to give people a little more choice, a little more freedom - in the way they choose to live and the way they choose to get around. That’s probably a pretty easy sell.
Thank you!
Of course, the best way to advocate for better infrastructure is to get out there and show there’s a demand. So, ride a bike! Take a walk! Go for a run! Basically, go do the thing!