I feel like people really underestimate the impact that your mode of transportation has on how you see and think about and interact with your city. Like, driving makes your city feel like a few islands, pockets of space where you regularly go and new ones you discover only when brought there for a purpose, but all amidst an ocean of just, filler. Taking public transit makes your city feel like a network of corridoors, a glowing grid along which you may discover new things, but whose alternate winding paths you only take when given to by circumstance. Cycling makes your city feel more human in its scale, and while you can only go so far, the spaces through which you travel are far more often built for people, not machines, and that difference is tangible, while your freedom of movement gives you more opportunities for exploration. Walking can only take you so far, but you see everything meant for you along those places, and every street feels like it carries potential, with no barriers to stopping and partaking of whatever piques your interest. I think, among these, driving is the one that by far most isolates you from the place you live, while the others are, in decreasing order, most utilitarian, and in increasing order, most personally connective to your shared space.
raccoon-sex-dungeon reblogged
#exactly#also proportional to how easy it is for me to learn my way around#in college i had such a good mental map of the city my campus was in bc i walked everywhere#still have no sense of direction in the city i went to high school in tho bc it’s a driving only suburbs kinda ditch#*sitch#mental maps#navigation#car culture