the weather is perfect
the ambiance is ideal
the food is good
the company is stimulating
but...
California is just not designed with pedestrians in mind, to the level that it is near impossible to cross roads separating adjacent neighbourhoods, or even walk between adjacent areas of shopping and business
is it really possible a good idea to legislate that children must eat well and rest? Will this actually lead to healthy laid back adults, or a major backlash...?
why does fresh produce grown locally cost twice as much as the same item shipped 3,000 miles?
the Invitation to the Inauguration is a very handsome document.
Sadly the one that I received is not actually for me...
not that I really want to be in DC next week anyway
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California is just not designed with pedestrians in mind
San Francisco is a quite walkable city, as is Berkeley within a 1-2 mile radius of the Campanile. Los Angeles, not so much. I can't say anything about Santa Barbara as I've never been there.
But it's not just California, it's most places in the US. Florida is like California without mountains. In Huntsville, AL, you need a car just to get across the UAH campus. One of my colleagues has no choice but to drive anywhere more than a block away from his house, because he lives in a two-street subdivision off a major highway.
I'm lucky to live in a place where I can walk to work and essential everyday shopping. Most of the US is not like that; it was designed around the assumption that everybody who can drive does.
it is the disjointness of the California walking zones - they are fragmented and there is clearly no thought given to people going between them on foot, or even bike.
At the level that it is not possible to walk between bus stops in some places.
This is going to get very interesting as fewer people have certain persistent access to cars, as opposed to being primarily a nuisance right now.
I grew up in Maryland. Almost none of the places I lived had any easy walking or biking access (the one exception being College Park.) I never learned to ride a bike, most places did not even have sidewalks. And some of these places were inside the Beltway.
This is endemic in how planning and development is done in the US, in a patchwork basis with the developers having a huge say.
I love where I live in Palo Alto because it's very walkable; like mentioned above, though, CA is extremely fragmented. I take the car out maybe once every other week. Also, farmers' markets are key for produce -- buying produce at the grocery store is a losing proposition.
From what little time I spent there, Santa Barbara was not terribly walkable, but I knew several people there last fall that had great success with bikes. (Advisor included.)