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According to this New York Times article, Sprint has designed its new campus to encourage people to walk, take the stairs, and otherwise move about. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I think its great that some companies are designing their campuses to encourage us to use the legs God gave us. The notion that people should walk some distance from their car to their office is great. That they should use the stairs rather than the elevators is wonderful.
But it underscores a much larger issue: These folks who are being compelled by design to walk at work, still need to use their car to get to work, to shop, to get anywhere where there is anything to do. And this is the tragic flip-side of these new HQ designs: that they are necessary. That we, as a nation, have become so car-dependent as to have to have walking thrust upon us in an environment specifically designed to encourage it.
I truly resent having to get into my car if I want to go, well, anywhere. When I lived in NYC, two very good grocery stores, a department store, and a bevy of storefront shops ranging from bakeries to locksmiths were all within walking distance, by which I mean within 8 blocks. Where I live in Minnesota, that bevy of storefront shops are all closed by the time I get home from work (6-6:30pm), so if I need a new toilet flapper, it's hop in the car and head to home depot. There was once a usable (if not good) grocery store near me. It was run out of business by Cub/Rainbow and is now a Hmong grocery that buys in too small a volume for any food distributors of reasonable size to deal with. This is all well and good when I need bean-thread, coconut milk, or tamarind paste, but for something as pedestrian as a loaf of bread that doesn't suck, I have to go somewhere in the car.
But I don't really have it so bad, because even if my neighborhood lacks destinations, it at least has SIDEWALKS. Too many places are lawn to the curb in a cul-de-sac with driveways leading to heated garages. And kids tooling around not on bikes, but rather in those little battery powered electric vehicles. These homes exist for no other purpose than to dispatch people in cars to various destinations. The fact that more and more of those cars are SUV's is a subject for another essay.
The fact that our entire nation is designed around cars rather than people is the sole reason that our nation has grown around the middle. Those who would blame McDonalds, should remember that McDonalds' very existence was inspired when Ray Kroc, flying over the highway system, saw a market in all the people who would be driving on it.
But it underscores a much larger issue: These folks who are being compelled by design to walk at work, still need to use their car to get to work, to shop, to get anywhere where there is anything to do. And this is the tragic flip-side of these new HQ designs: that they are necessary. That we, as a nation, have become so car-dependent as to have to have walking thrust upon us in an environment specifically designed to encourage it.
I truly resent having to get into my car if I want to go, well, anywhere. When I lived in NYC, two very good grocery stores, a department store, and a bevy of storefront shops ranging from bakeries to locksmiths were all within walking distance, by which I mean within 8 blocks. Where I live in Minnesota, that bevy of storefront shops are all closed by the time I get home from work (6-6:30pm), so if I need a new toilet flapper, it's hop in the car and head to home depot. There was once a usable (if not good) grocery store near me. It was run out of business by Cub/Rainbow and is now a Hmong grocery that buys in too small a volume for any food distributors of reasonable size to deal with. This is all well and good when I need bean-thread, coconut milk, or tamarind paste, but for something as pedestrian as a loaf of bread that doesn't suck, I have to go somewhere in the car.
But I don't really have it so bad, because even if my neighborhood lacks destinations, it at least has SIDEWALKS. Too many places are lawn to the curb in a cul-de-sac with driveways leading to heated garages. And kids tooling around not on bikes, but rather in those little battery powered electric vehicles. These homes exist for no other purpose than to dispatch people in cars to various destinations. The fact that more and more of those cars are SUV's is a subject for another essay.
The fact that our entire nation is designed around cars rather than people is the sole reason that our nation has grown around the middle. Those who would blame McDonalds, should remember that McDonalds' very existence was inspired when Ray Kroc, flying over the highway system, saw a market in all the people who would be driving on it.
