Walk on
Robyn Fadden
Mary Soderstrom hits the pavement of Montreal and beyond to explore the state of urban walking in The Walkable City
As the snow starts to fall in Montreal, many of us trade in the bike (though the more hardcore are winterizing their bikes and donning balaclavas) for winter boots and the old standby: walking. Even if we're just walking to the metro station, there's something sturdy, reliable and a little introspective about this form of self-propelled transportation. Montreal author Mary Soderstrom knows it too: Her latest book, The Walkable City: From Haussmann's Boulevards to Jane Jacobs' Streets and Beyond, examines how cities are built to support - or discourage - a pedestrian presence."In terms of health - individual and in terms of the city - walking a certain amount is good for us," says Soderstrom. "It's necessary to have neighbourhoods that are walkable - inside and in between. A critical mass in public is necessary too - in Montreal we're lucky because in the middle of the day we can walk through parks and they're full of people, we can feel safe and feel a sense of community."
The Walkable City follows up on themes in Soderstrom's 2007 Green City: People, Nature and Urban Places, which explored the natural histories of 11 cities around the world. The Walkable City takes a similar historical approach but focuses on "how the street is where we live and where we have to make changes." Soderstrom goes to the streets of Paris, New York, Toronto, North Vancouver, Singapore and Montreal to look at how urban development unfolded over the years. She moves from the failure of
Parisian suburbs built around a "tower-in-the-park" model to the changes to Griffintown, a once-industrial and working-class residential neighbourhood just south of downtown Montreal that is now experiencing a condo surge. Bringing together diverse urban experiences into one book has let her see both the positive and the negative in city living, but ultimately, "The message is kind of stark - we have to change the way we live.""I see that the walkable city can work and does work and should be expanded," she says. "When people live relatively close together, they can tell who looks like they fit in, who looks like they have business on the street. It's a community of people who see each other... It's not about anonymity - if you live in a neighbourhood where everyone drives cars, you may not know anybody. It makes a civil society that much more difficult."
So, our need for speed is sadly counteractive, possibly even unnatural: The human body is meant to walk, Soderstrom says, quoting from her anatomical research. "It's not our opposable thumb that makes us so special, it's our feet."
Mary Soderstrom discusses The Walkable City Dec. 6 at 3 p.m., the Mile End Library (5434 Parc)
The Walkable City: From Haussmann's Boulevards to Jane Jacob's Streets and Beyond (Véhicule Press), 243 pp.
