A Walking Life

A Walking Life PDF Author: Antonia Malchik
Publisher: Da Capo Lifelong Books
ISBN: 0738220175
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book Here

Book Description
For readers of On Trails, this is an incisive, utterly engaging exploration of walking: how it is fundamental to our being human, how we've designed it out of our lives, and how it is essential that we reembrace it. "I'm going for a walk." How often has this phrase been uttered by someone with a heart full of anger or sorrow? Or as an invitation, a precursor to a declaration of love? Our species and its predecessors have been bipedal walkers for at least six million years; by now, we take this seemingly arbitrary motion for granted. Yet how many of us still really walk in our everyday lives? Driven by a combination of a car-centric culture and an insatiable thirst for productivity and efficiency, we're spending more time sedentary and alone than we ever have before. If bipedal walking is truly what makes our species human, as paleoanthropologists claim, what does it mean that we are designing walking right out of our lives? Antonia Malchik asks essential questions at the center of humanity's evolution and social structures: Who gets to walk, and where? How did we lose the right to walk, and what implications does that have for the strength of our communities, the future of democracy, and the pervasive loneliness of individual lives? The loss of walking as an individual and a community act has the potential to destroy our deepest spiritual connections, our democratic society, our neighborhoods, and our freedom. But we can change the course of our mobility. And we need to. Delving into a wealth of science, history, and anecdote -- from our deepest origins as hominins to our first steps as babies, to universal design and social infrastructure, A Walking Life shows exactly how walking is essential, how deeply reliant our brains and bodies are on this simple pedestrian act -- and how we can reclaim it.

A Walking Life

A Walking Life PDF Author: Antonia Malchik
Publisher: Da Capo Lifelong Books
ISBN: 0738220175
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book Here

Book Description
For readers of On Trails, this is an incisive, utterly engaging exploration of walking: how it is fundamental to our being human, how we've designed it out of our lives, and how it is essential that we reembrace it. "I'm going for a walk." How often has this phrase been uttered by someone with a heart full of anger or sorrow? Or as an invitation, a precursor to a declaration of love? Our species and its predecessors have been bipedal walkers for at least six million years; by now, we take this seemingly arbitrary motion for granted. Yet how many of us still really walk in our everyday lives? Driven by a combination of a car-centric culture and an insatiable thirst for productivity and efficiency, we're spending more time sedentary and alone than we ever have before. If bipedal walking is truly what makes our species human, as paleoanthropologists claim, what does it mean that we are designing walking right out of our lives? Antonia Malchik asks essential questions at the center of humanity's evolution and social structures: Who gets to walk, and where? How did we lose the right to walk, and what implications does that have for the strength of our communities, the future of democracy, and the pervasive loneliness of individual lives? The loss of walking as an individual and a community act has the potential to destroy our deepest spiritual connections, our democratic society, our neighborhoods, and our freedom. But we can change the course of our mobility. And we need to. Delving into a wealth of science, history, and anecdote -- from our deepest origins as hominins to our first steps as babies, to universal design and social infrastructure, A Walking Life shows exactly how walking is essential, how deeply reliant our brains and bodies are on this simple pedestrian act -- and how we can reclaim it.

Walkable City

Walkable City PDF Author: Jeff Speck
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0865477728
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Get Book Here

Book Description
Presents a plan for American cities that focuses on making downtowns walkable and less attractive to drivers through smart growth and sustainable design

The Walkable City

The Walkable City PDF Author: Jennie Middleton
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1315519208
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book explores everyday walking in contemporary urban life. It brings together important theoretical and empirical insights to understand how the ‘walkability’ of urban spaces can be imagined, planned for, and experienced. The book focuses on the everyday experiences of the urban walker, the bodily experiences of walking, and different walking research methods. It goes beyond the conventional focus on walkable places by delving into the ways in which urban space is consumed and produced through different ways of walking. Drawing on fieldwork in the UK and international secondary sources, the book examines how walking is socially and materially co-produced, focusing on pedestrian practices, infrastructures, and the social nature of walking. Chapters in the book offer key explorations of the cultural and social inclusions and exclusions of navigating the city on foot. The book considers transport planning and policy promoting pedestrian movement, pedestrian infrastructures, the politics of walking, and social interactions of urban pedestrians. The book offers vital analyses of how different but overlapping dimensions of walking and their relationship with urban space are often overlooked, and the importance of centring the lived experiences of walking in understandings of pedestrian practices. This book provides a timely contribution to the field of mobilities due to a growing interest in urban walking. It will be of interest to students and scholars of urban studies, human geography, sociology, and public health.

Walking Washington's History

Walking Washington's History PDF Author: Judy Bentley
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295806672
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 301

Get Book Here

Book Description
Walking Washington’s History: Ten Cities, a follow-up to Judy Bentley’s bestselling Hiking Washington’s History, showcases the state’s engaging urban history through guided walks in ten major cities. Using narrated walks, maps, and historic photographs, Bentley reveals each city’s aspirations. She begins in Vancouver, established as a fur trade emporium on a plain above the Columbia River, and ends with Bellevue, a bedroom community turned edge city. In between, readers crisscross the state, with walks through urban Olympia, Walla Walla, Tacoma, Seattle, Everett, Bellingham, Yakima, and Spokane. Whether readers pass through these cities as tourists or set out to explore their home terrain, they will discover both the visible and invisible markers of Washington history underfoot.

Berkeley Walks

Berkeley Walks PDF Author: Robert E. Johnson
Publisher: Roaring Forties Press
ISBN: 1938901517
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Get Book Here

Book Description
Berkeley Walks celebrates the things that make Berkeley such a wonderful walking city—diverse architecture, panoramic views, tree-lined neighborhoods, historic homes, unusual gardens, secret pathways, hidden parks, vibrant street life, trend-setting restaurants, and intriguing history. Fascinating and surprising sidelights include the apartment building from which Patty Hearst was kidnapped; Ted Kaczynski’s home before he became the Unabomber; and the residences of Nobel laureates and literary Berkeleyans such as Thornton Wilder, Ann Rice, and Philip K. Dick. Bob Johnson and Janet Byron—longtime city residents and tour guides—designed these 18 walks to showcase the many elements that make Berkeley’s neighborhoods, shopping districts, and academic areas such fun to explore. Visitors will discover a vibrant community beyond the University of California campus borders, while locals will be surprised and delighted by the treasures in their own backyards. Highlights of the book include a focus on architects Joseph Esherick, John Galen Howard, Bernard Maybeck, Julia Morgan, James Plachek, Walter Ratcliff, Jr., and John Hudson Thomas, 100 archival and original photos, and 20 maps, including a map of Berkeley bookstores.

Walking Cities: London

Walking Cities: London PDF Author: Jaspar Joseph-Lester
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000072010
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Get Book Here

Book Description
Walking Cities: London (second edition) brings together a new interdisciplinary field of artists, writers, architects, musicians, human geographers and philosophers to consider how a city walk informs and triggers new processes of making, thinking, researching and communicating. In particular, the book examines how the city contains narratives, knowledge and contested materialities that are best accessed through the act of walking. The varied contributions take the form of short stories, illustrated essays, personal reflections and accounts of walks both real and fictional. While artist and RCA tutor Rut Blees Luxemburg and philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy recount a nocturnal journey from Shoreditch to the City of London; architect Peter St John of the practice Caruso St John offers a detailed and personal reflection on the Holloway Road; and architect and author Douglas Murphy examines what he calls London’s ‘more politically charged locations’ in his account of a solitary walk through an area of South London. Ultimately, Walking Cities: London seeks to understand the wider significance of changing geographies to generate critical questions and creative perspectives for navigating the social and political impact of rapid urban change.

Walking in Cities

Walking in Cities PDF Author: Evrick Brown
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 1439912211
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book Here

Book Description
Walking connects the rhythms of urban life to the configuration of urban spaces. As the contributors and editors show in Walking in Cities, walking also reflects the systematic inequalities that order contemporary urban life. Walking has different meanings because it can be a way of temporarily “taking possession” of urban space, or it can make the relatively powerless more vulnerable to crime. The essays in Walking in Cities explore how walking intersects with sociological dimensions such as gender, race and ethnicity, social class, and power. Various chapters explorethe flâneuse, or female urban drifter, in Tehran’s shopping malls; Hispanic neighborhoods in New York, San Diego, and El Paso; and the intra-neighborhood and inter-class dynamics of gentrification in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.The essays in Walking in Cities provide important lessons about urban life.

The New York Nobody Knows

The New York Nobody Knows PDF Author: William B. Helmreich
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691169705
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 474

Get Book Here

Book Description
"As a kid growing up in Manhattan, William Helmreich played a game with his father they called "Last Stop." They would pick a subway line and ride it to its final destination, and explore the neighborhood there. Decades later, Helmreich teaches university courses about New York, and his love for exploring the city is as strong as ever. Putting his feet to the test, he decided that the only way to truly understand New York was to walk virtually every block of all five boroughs--an astonishing 6,000 miles. His epic journey lasted four years and took him to every corner of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island. Helmreich spoke with hundreds of New Yorkers from every part of the globe and from every walk of life, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former mayors Rudolph Giuliani, David Dinkins, and Edward Koch. Their stories and his are the subject of this captivating and highly original book. We meet the Guyanese immigrant who grows beautiful flowers outside his modest Queens residence in order to always remember the homeland he left behind, the Brooklyn-raised grandchild of Italian immigrants who illuminates a window of his brownstone with the family's old neon grocery-store sign, and many, many others. Helmreich draws on firsthand insights to examine essential aspects of urban social life such as ethnicity, gentrification, and the use of space. He finds that to be a New Yorker is to struggle to understand the place and to make a life that is as highly local as it is dynamically cosmopolitan."--Publisher's description.

Walking Paris

Walking Paris PDF Author: Pas Paschali
Publisher: National Geographic Society
ISBN: 885441588X
Category : Paris (France)
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Get Book Here

Book Description
The best way to appreciate the city is to walk: it is only on foot that you can explore the lively districts in all their variety and diversity. Decidedly Parisian, the guide introduces the reader to the more unusual aspects of the city's culture, such as haute couture, art, theatre, and the best of local life, from street markets to minor museums and visits to architectural peculiarities.

National Geographic Walking London

National Geographic Walking London PDF Author: Sara Calian
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1426216564
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Local haunts, iconic landmarks, little-known surprises, plus insider tips."