There's a reason the phrase "as the crow flies" is often used when discussing travel.
Two places can be really close, yet require covering considerably more distance to get there. This can be especially true in poorly planned American suburbs.
TikToker Streetcraft (@streetcraft), an expert in urban planning, highlighted a particularly frustrating example of the phenomenon in Florida.
@streetcraft If places are designed in a way that make it hard to walk and easy to drive, people are going to be incentivized to drive. #urbanplanning #suburbs #urbanism #civilengineering #citiesskylines #roaddesign ♬ original sound - streetcraft
In the video, the narrator describes how an apartment complex is situated just 400 feet away from a grocery store. You can imagine how convenient that could be.
Instead, woods separate the complex from the store because nobody built a simple walking path to connect the two. Residents would have to walk over a half-mile to get to the store or haphazardly bushwhack through Florida woods, per the TikToker.
The poor planning doesn't stop there. In an adjacent neighborhood, the grocery store is a mere quarter-mile away. Rather than putting in a crosswalk on the four-lane highway to connect the neighborhood to the apartment complex and shopping area, the nearest crosswalk is several tenths of a mile away. That quarter-mile trip is now over a mile.
All of these oversights come with consequences. As the TikTok user explains, this design "almost feels like it's intentional" in pushing residents to be dependent on their cars. They note that, in reality, builders create suburbs "in pieces that don't make up something whole."
So, creating a driving-dependent area might not be the goal, but it assuredly is the outcome. This example is far from an isolated one.
The impact on residents is considerable. Gas-powered cars generate air and noise pollution, warm the planet, and contribute to our dependence on dirty energy sources.
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It's a loss for the neighborhood and residents who want to save on transportation, too. Instead of a quick walk or bike to do groceries, shop, or eat, they face an unnecessarily lengthier one or a drive, all for something that could be solved on the front end with a path and a crosswalk.
TikTokers from around the world expressed bewilderment and frustration with the situation.
One commenter wrote, "this makes me VISIBLY ANGRY, and I live halfway round the world."
"I love living in a walkable city," a poster chimed in. They added that they "will never live in a suburb or non walkable area again."
Another joked that "in Europe, pedestrians would build a path through the wall by themselves."
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