The 20 Minute Good Life-Where in Pittsburgh? (York, Washington: 2010, employment, to buy)

[greg42]

Originally Posted by Katiana

Which is the difference between a couple and a family. Once you have kids, you have to take them along for years to come (or hire a babysitter), drag them down the street with you, supervise them in the store, then turn around and do it all over again in reverse. Sounds like fun, not!

Never sounded like fun to me. I don't have and will not have any kids.

[Katiana]

Originally Posted by Hopes

I don't know many couples who grocery shop together---especially the more years married.

There are simply too many things to get done. One can be doing laundry or changing car breaks while the other shops.

Plus, I'd rather use the 40 minutes for excercise riding horses or playing tennis.

Too true! You'd need marriage counseling afterwards!

[Chichappens]

Originally Posted by greg42

Never sounded like fun to me. I don't have and will not have any kids.

I am with you on that ....being a women no way am I going to ruin my body for that.. nope nope nope....

[fleetiebelle]

When I lived on Mt. Washington I'd notice there were a lot of Point Park and Art Institute students who'd take the incline down and then walk or catch a bus to their classes.\

I don't know many couples who grocery shop together

I was at the grocery store yesterday, and there were several entire families shopping. It seemed like a lot more work to corral everyone than if someone had stayed home with the kids while the other went shopping. I had to take a few deep cleansing breaths while kids were racing up and down the aisles or touching all the yogurt containers.

[Fiddlehead]

One of the interesting things about this thread is how the topography affects nonmechanized transportation options. I am not zealot here; due to the layout of our town and my current job and my schedule, I often walk or bike to work, but usually drive to the gym, which is in the opposite direction, but over a big windy overpass. I often feel time pressured coming and going to the gym, but not to work, so I sympathize with whether 20 minutes is good or bad..

Now to topography. Our town in Oregon is on a big slop inverse parabolic slope that goes from slight at the bottow to very steep at the top of the town. Many of the nicest "vew homes" are just a half mile or so above the main artery through town, so not remote at all. But very few people from those homes walk or bike. It is a fun ride into town, but is just too hard to get home. So a car for every trip essentially in a small, pedestrian friendly town. In the original article, Davis, California, the "model city" where folks actually telecommute to San Francisco, is flat as a table top. Clearly that model could not be imported to Pittsburgh without some modification. Given the unique topography of your city (very steep slopes with milder plateau surfaces) more frequent "assists" would probably help quite a bit. So, by this thinking, the southside inclines might be work replicating elsewher if it were possible and would be used. Or perhaps a transit system like in Morgantown, when folks are zipping along on tracks above the ground.

I've never used one myself, but has anyone tried a Segue there? I hear they are common in San Fran, which is also hilly. Kind of dorky looking, but perhaps useful?

[BrianTH]

A couple random comments in light of the discussion above:

--I'm not sure a Segway could handle the state of the sidewalks in many of Pittsburgh's residential neighborhoods (which is a whole different story), but I know they use them for tours going from the South Side through Downtown and into the North Shore. Incidentally, I agree that a little vertical assist in the form of a funicular really feels like something different in kind from using a bus or regular train to cover vertical distance. In fact, although this is a random comparison, it reminds me of the big escalator they have in Toledo, Spain to help walkers access the hilltop historic center:



But again, what counts as consistent with a walkable "good life" is up to you, so this is really one of those situations where the facts are what they are and it is up to each person to interpret them in light of their personal preferences.

--The lack of a convenient grocery store is the one thing a lot of otherwise walkable neighborhoods in Pittsburgh are going to get dinged for. For example, I generally consider my neighborhood, Regent Square, to be quite walkable, but we only have a convenience store in the neighborhood, and although the Giant Eagle in the Edgewood Town Center is technically close enough to be walkable, it is such an unpleasant walk I don't consider it as counting. As an aside, there is in fact a bus that runs people from the neighborhood over to the Edgewood Town Center, which may be suitable at least for singles and couples shopping just for themselves.

But for the reasons given above, our family would likely drive to grocery shop anyway (sidenote: the play zone in the Giant Eagle at The Waterfront makes taking a child along for shopping a whole different experience), unless perhaps we were right on top of a grocery store. So again, in my view the question then becomes what you really want or need in terms of walkability to fulfill your vision of "the good life". For us, needing to drive specifically to the grocery store is not a major issue, but others may have a different view.

[Fiddlehead]

I agree that the realities of things are what they are. However, bold visions equally relevant to what makes any city great. For instance the Cathedral of Learning, and the Empire State Building are both examples of grandiose visions that someone had the hubris and silliness to be believe were important.

Although I have no moral authority to pontificate on the topic, I believe excessive use of the car is a big negative in the American lifestyle. Sure, it is incredibly liberating on road trips,etc. but day to day it just binds things up and diminishes one's quality of live IMO. I knew a teacher friend in Sweden who commuted about an hour into Stockholm via train. She would do her paper grading and prepping on the hour long ride into the city, then return to her family refreshed. I would suspect that the typical American commuter who drives home an hour is not so refreshed. So, I guess I am saying I agree with the "good life" model to a degree. However, I think that some innovation on the part of transportation planners could help people in many cities and situations.

[ctoocheck]

I believe excessive use of the car is a big negative in the American lifestyle.

I, for one, and probably many other people here, would most certainly agree. Cars can be great, for example for grocery shopping ;-) But when you always need one to get anywhere of any significance, something's wrong. If you don't have to haul heavy things or multiple people, there should be another way: walk, bike, bus, train, whatever.

[Fiddlehead]

Ctoocheck,

I see you are posting from Dresden, Germany. How do the Germans do it? My impression is that they love their cars as much as we do, but have a solid support for public transit too. I rode many trains through the country and found them to be reliable, clean, in a word, outstanding. I also recall riding on the autobahn with some guy many years ago, as an annoying hippy backpacker. He seemed disappointed that I did not want to smoke hashic\sh with him the whole way, and that I did not speak German...other than a few moments of terror, pretty fun...

How is the "20 minute Goodlife in Germany?" Is it more like America or Amsterdam....?

[ctoocheck]

Wellll, I've never been to Amsterdam, but...

I have been in Germany (as part of a German-American Friendship exchange program) for a little over 10 weeks so far. First I was with a host family in a little town (30,000 people) in the South called Radolfzell. There, it was a 15-minute, 2-mile bike ride between home and language school. I would stop by the grocery store most days on the way home from school, or during lunch break to pick up some delicious pretzels (so delicious) or a few things (usually on the bike, I guess on the bus too when it gets colder/snowy). There was a farmer's market in every Wednesday and Saturday, and people would bike in from around the town (esp. on Saturdays since the market was done by 2 and people weren't out from work yet on Wednesday, I guess) and pick some stuff up there. So my host mom would bike to the market, or get fruit from trees in their yard, or from neighbors or farmer's stands, then drive to the supermarket maybe once a week to get other stuff and drinks (buying drinks is big in Germany, they even have stores selling solely drinks. My family would always get a case or two of beer, apple juice, and mineral water.) These things are heavy and it would be really hard to shop for a family without a car.

There town wasn't very big, I was in a smaller neighborhood/small town (of about 3000) a bit out from the center (about 2 miles), so it's quite different than Pittsburgh and Dresden. But there was still a bakery, butcher, bank, bar, etc on the "main street" of my neighborhood that was quite walkable, and you could walk or bike to the train station or "downtown" to get to nearby cities for more options.

I moved to Dresden only a little over 2 weeks ago. It's a city of 500,000 but it's mostly very compact. Despite living only a 5-minute bike ride/15-minute walk from the train station and the edge of the city center, as well as being a university neighborhood (next the Technical University of Dresden, a school with 30,000 students), though, there's not a TON of stuff around in my particular neighborhood, but I can bike (or walk, or take a streetcar) within 15 minutes to an Aldi and another small supermarket. There are shopping centers in the center of the city with all the "big-box" type stores you could need, plus more near the outskirts. Even Ikea is easily accessible, though it's on the other side of town from me, and I've seen people carry furniture on and off of busses! It's not terribly far in any case, but if the store is between you and work or school it's no sweat. I'm only cooking for one, so I can't say how it would be with a family, but I am ok with going to the store 2 or 3 times a week. Plus Germans have smaller refrigerators, so there's only so much you can fit.

Germans do use cars frequently, though not as much as Americans in any case. It would be a real pain to have to drive into the city (due to small roads, pedestrian rights-of-way, and lack of parking, at least), so I think they simply find biking or taking transit is much easier. They do often use cars for shopping (carrying back that case of beer is quite a work out) or for going further distances. (The trains are great, especially if you don't have a car, but it's probably easiest and cheapest by car especially when you aren't just traveling alone). But I would say that most people walk/bike/train/tram to where they need to get instead of driving all over. Here it just makes more sense. There's probably a lot more cultural/lifestyle stuff that contributes to all this, it's kind of hard to explain.

I also studied in Rome, right in the center, where we had a market directly outside and a supermarket a 5-minute walk away. I think Italians tend to use cars less often, at least in the city. Romans, at least, stick to their neighborhoods. Everything is right there - for centuries they couldn't go further than they could walk - and they have no real reason to leave, unless going to a soccer game.

I also went to school in DC (at Catholic). Despite being some 3 miles from the capitol in the heart of DC, the Brookland neighborhhod didn't have much. There weren't many places you could walk to besides liquor stores, chinese restaurants, a couple banks, a bar or two, and an organic food market (good, but expensive). You could take a bus or Metro to the grocery store 1 stop away, but then you had to traverse a giant parking lot. Biking might have been fine, but I had a car my last semester and it came in very handy for grocery shopping, and going places like Ikea.

So yeah, Europeans do like their cars. They use them when necessary, just not ALL the time, like many Americans like to/are forced to. Usually just because (probably) it is less a hastle to train/bike/walk, and naturally because they have great public transit and bike lanes. (and, in many cases, no hills!!)

So I have lived lots of places in my short life. I think a "20 minute good life" in Pittsburgh would be quite possible, perhaps even moreso than it is for me in the particular neighborhood where I am now. There are a few neighborhoods that have all you need within walking distance (they have been named). Really, in some cases, the selection is quite good. I think you can't get much better than places like Squirrel Hill or the South Side. And I don't think many areas of Pgh are much worse-off than many places in Europe (though they could be vastly improved with better public transportation or bike lanes!)

Hope this answers some questions, I am in process of trying to dissect it all myself as I am studying urban planning. Feel free to throw out some follow-ups!