How to create a culture of walking...

"Communities have a right to up-to-date, good quality, accessible information on where they can walk and the quality of the experience. People should be given opportunities to celebrate and enjoy walking as part of their everyday social, cultural and political life".

The trails in Mission Viejo are great for leisure and recreation, but not everyone lives like this 'Super Mom', out blazing the Oso Creek Trail for a little exercise. For the rest of us, we need to be coaxed into exercise to the point that we don't even know we are exercising. By creating enhanced walking experiences from desirable place to desirable place, can be that coaxing element.

Currently, when walking around Mission Viejo, we are offered the streets as our main connection element. The 5' wide curb adjacent sidewalk, next to a tiny and poorly maintained landscape setback, adjacent to a sea of asphalt at our underwhelming retail centers is not exactly a enhanced walking experience. Nor is it comfortable to traverse across the bridges in this city where you constantly feel like your going to be run over by a car.

So, what actions can be taken?
What we (the City staff and council, current property owners and incoming developers, and residents) need to do is:

• Actively encourage all members of the community to walk whenever and wherever they can as a part of their daily lives by developing regular creative, targeted information, in a way that responds to their personal needs and engages personal support.
  
• Create a positive image of walking by celebrating walking as part of cultural heritage and as a cultural event, for example, in architecture, art-exhibitions, theatres, literature readings, photography and street animation.


• Provide coherent and consistent information and signage systems to support exploration and discovery on foot including links to public transport.


• Financially reward people who walk more, through local businesses, workplaces and government incentives.


• Looking at future improvements by hitting the drawing boards with quality design consultants and with an open and flexible mind to providing creative solutions to real problems which exist in community today.
  

Now is not the time to sit on our heels and relic in the aging 'Masterplan' of the community and think that maintaining the quality of our community is by doing nothing. We are already seen our houses and retail centers deteriorate, many people have already invested in the long term of their properties by making sound improvements; most have not. If we want our community to continue to be the city where people come to shop and raise their families, we must invest in it.

It's not too late to re-think the 'Masterplan'!

'Super Mom' was featured in a past article in the OC Register. All other photos taken by author. Some content courtesy of Walk21.

Thinking outside the GREEN box!

National Geographic contained an article last month called "A Bicycle Bump" which featured Portland, Oregon for it's "171 miles of bike lanes, ten freshly painted green boxes (picture above) that put cyclists safely ahead of vehicles, even some signals just for bikes." And this isn't the first time the yellow-bordered magazine has featured Portland. In the August 2008 issue, it named Portland the number one city in the top five bike-friendly cities in the nation.

It's of no surprise that biking is on the rise. With gas prices soaring, more and more people are parking the car and choosing to pedal to work. According to National Geographic, they measured this by the number of additional bikes being places on the racks of buses. In the lead is Houston with a whopping 235% increase.With more and more bike friendly streets being built and programs like bike-sharing, it's hard for anyone not to have the incentive to keep the car at home. Paris has a great bike sharing program, seen in the image below, taken near the Viaduc de Artes.

How wonderful would it be to show up in any city and be able to just grab a bike and go. Sure you can rent bikes for a time, but then they always have to be returned to the same place. Have a network of kiosks where you can pick up and drop off as you please purely on an as-needed basis is definitely something that would have more people grabbing a bike.

Now, many of you might be thinking that biking in Mission Viejo is more of a sport tham eco-commuting with all the hills we have in our city. But if our local government and developers would consider investing in our community by ways of improving the commercial and civic properties and amenities as well as improving the pedestrian and bicycle connectivity, this just might be a viable option for MV.

We could also take this concept further...what about sharing kids toys, video games and DVD'S, clothes, etc. We spend so much money on these things and more often than not we all complain about having these things pile up in our closets, garages and 'nooks & crannies'.

Think about it...what's your ideas?