Happiness Is a Pedestrian and Bike Friendly City

When three bikes sped past me during my morning run on Sunday, I barely noticed them. But that changed a few seconds later when I heard the blaring horn of a car that was following close behind them. There was no accident. The driver wanted the bikers to move to the side of the road.

Guadalajara reserves its main roads to bikers and walkers on Sundays.

This was troubling because on Sundays portions of that road are closed to cars and reserved for bikers and pedestrians. If bikers are being hassled while riding on this road, where is it safe?

To the driver, who probably had the air conditioner on and was listening to his favorite radio station, the event was probably no more than an annoyance. But to those of us walking or riding a bike, the sound of the horn triggered a burst of adrenaline.

Some experts believe that the urban sprawl that makes us so reliant on cars has drastically reduced the quality of our life.

Isolated and Selfish. In his book Bowling Alone (2000), Robert Putnam argues convincingly that the urban sprawl that has resulted from today’s car culture has made people more isolated and selfish than before. He supports his argument with statistics showing lower participation in community and civic groups, fewer family dinners, and less socializing with neighbors.

Another finding, which inspired the title for his book, was that fewer people were joining bowling leagues. Instead, bowling industry experts told him, most people were bowling by themselves.

“There’s a simple rule of thumb: Every ten minutes of commuting results in ten per cent fewer social connections. Commuting is connected to social isolation, which causes unhappiness,” Putnam told the New Yorker in 2007.

Residents’ Sense of Well-Being. In an earlier post, I described how urban-planning initiatives such as temporarily limiting traffic to bicycles on main thoroughfares contribute to residents’ sense of well-being. Other ideas include reserving some parts of town to pedestrians (like New York City has done recently with Times Square), and creating a rapid transit bus system.

Fortunately, it seems that more cities are beginning to implement these policies. When I was visiting Guadalajara, I was pleasantly surprised to see that on Sunday mornings the city specifically reserves some of its main roads to pedestrians and bikers. Mexico City does the same. In fact, the Mexico’s largest city has pledged to build 186 miles of bike paths by 2012, Tree Hugger reported last year.

Other cities are making efforts to reduce traffic and pollution too. Bogota, Colombia’s rapid transit bus system has helped the city to remove 7,000 small buses from its streets, the New York Times reported last week.

Global warming and the high price of gas are among the most commonly cited reasons for why we need to wean ourselves from our current over reliance on cars. But there’s an even more immediate reason with a bigger payoff: happiness.