Why is it called A New Sidewalk?

I didn't even notice the lack of sidewalks.  When I bought our house in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 2004, I didn't notice that the nearest sidewalk was four blocks away.  If you've ever bought a home, maybe you'll sympathize with me; we often overlook something that becomes important later.

In my defense, I was distracted by history.  I grew up in a quiet suburban neighborhood in a smallish Indiana town.  No sidewalks in that neighborhood, either.  There was so little traffic we never seemed to miss them.  (That's the house in the photograph.  Nice neighborhood, except for the occasional ice storm.)

Growing up, my family vacationed on Florida's Gulf coast almost every year.  It was, and still is, common among Midwesterners.  I could walk for hours on the beach and be perfectly happy.  Isn't the beach just a sidewalk for the ocean?  So I grew up with a nostalgic affection for coastal Florida.  Even when I lived in California, I imagined that one day I would live near the Gulf of Mexico.

Julie and I lived in North Carolina from 2001 to 2004.  Of course, we lived in a neighborhood without sidewalks.  Those were boom years for Florida real estate.  We decided to buy into the St. Petersburg housing market even before moving here.  (Don't laugh - you probably didn't see the housing market collapse coming, either.  That's a topic for another day.)  I came to St. Petersburg for a weekend in early 2004, spent a day on a whirlwind tour of houses, and took a bunch of photos to show Julie when I returned.  It was snowing heavily in North Carolina the day we looked at photos of houses in sunny Florida.

Given this history, I think I deserve some slack for not thinking about sidewalks.  Another factor in my favor, there is a county-wide recreational trail across the street.  Plenty of walking/running/cycling to be done there.

In his book The City Assembled, architectural historian Spiro Kostof speculates that the first sidewalks may have been built around 2000-1900 BC in the merchant colony of Kültepe, in what is now Turkey.  They didn't become widely used until the late 1800s.  In modern-day suburbs, like my current neighborhood, zoning and low density work against sidewalks.  Zoning keeps out retail that might benefit from sidewalk traffic.  Housing spread out in single-family homes with yards results in fewer people per block in need of a pedestrian-friendly area (and greater distances usually make walking anywhere impractical).  It's no surprise that sidewalks can dramatically improve safety for pedestrians.  And they can serve multiple purposes beyond the obvious pedestrian transit route.

Like the neighborhood where I grew up, our current neighborhood has little motor vehicle traffic.  But the streets are narrower; the drivers here are faster and less civil.  Certainly faster than traffic in ancient Kültepe.  Julie and I both enjoy walking and we miss having sidewalks.  We like living in St. Petersburg, it's just, well, we should have been looking for a neighborhood with sidewalks.  Lesson learned.

What's missing from this street?

The Bravards I think was known of their wanderlust.

That's from a letter my paternal grandmother wrote to me in 2001.  Grandma wrote a series of letters that described her life in Indiana in the 1930s.  They are fascinating and my only regret is that she didn't write more.

By that time, I had changed addresses eight times since graduating from business school in 1991 (nine times if you count the short-term apartment rental while house-shopping in North Carolina).  Grandma couldn't have told me sooner about the wanderlust?

In the excellent 1991 suspense film Dead Again, Robin Williams' character says something to the effect of:

People are either smokers or non-smokers.  The best thing you can do is figure out which you are and be true to it.

Kids: I'm not condoning smoking.  It destroys your lungs and makes you smell bad.  Still, I'm drawn to the idea that a major source of contentment in life is figuring out one's true nature.  Thinking beyond short-term self-appeasement and looking toward long-term fulfillment.  Shakespeare was unusually efficient on the subject: To thine own self be true.  I wonder if most of us, myself included, have spent enough time thinking about who we really are and what our true potential is.

Despite Grandma's insightful note, I changed addresses three more times before landing at my current address in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 2005 (that's my street in the photo above).  In that time I've learned a few things about myself and the world; I hope those lessons, and lessons in progress, will guide me in writing this blog.  One of the things that fascinates me is how place affects us.  How regional cultures, technology, transportation, and urban design issues influence our lives.  The Florida version of me is not the same as the Indiana, Texas, California, or North Carolina versions.

The time has come for a variation on the Florida version.  I'll elaborate in future posts, but here is the short version: My partner, Julie, works in Tampa, across Tampa Bay from St. Petersburg.  My current plan is to go to school in Tampa beginning January, 2011.  Rather than make the 90-minute-plus round-trip commute every day, we're trying to rent our house so we can move to Tampa.  I'm using this transition as a launching point for this blog.

I'll be writing about the importance of location, the changing nature of the urban (or suburban or rural) environment and how this affects our personal and professional lives.  Also how online communities have come to enhance, and sometimes replace, physical communities.  I'll often turn to people much smarter than me for inspiration, and I'll rely on my passions of photography, music, movies and literature to help tell the story.  My goal is not to point anyone in a particular direction, but to find my own direction and maybe help others in the process.  To find a new sidewalk, so to speak.

Currently, I'm on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter and have my own web site that features some of my photography.  Those are good places to find out about my background and qualifications.  I hope that you'll comment here or drop me a line; suggestions and constructive feedback are welcome and appreciated.

In the meantime, think about always being in a mode of self-assessment.  Every day is a transition; what we can influence are the direction and velocity.  And if you're fortunate enough to be in touch with any of your grandparents, listen to them.  They won't always be right, but they offer a unique historical perspective.