Yesterday I had a personal reminder of why planning is important. I drove with a friend from Philadelphia to Stamford, CT. On the way, we were stuck in horrendous traffic all around New York. Being stuck in traffic is absolutely no fun, even with the best of company. You can’t refill your water bottle, there’s no bathroom to use, and you can’t get up to stretch sore muscles. Cars isolate their drivers and passengers from the potential community around them. They pump disastrous carbon into the atmosphere, and particulate toxins into our lungs. Bad news all around. Time for some transportation policy progress.
Then, when we arrived in Stamford, I was reminded how quintessentially suburban that place is. I believe yesterday was the first time I ever set foot in a true mcmansion. It was big enough to get lost in, cloistered at the end of a manicured winding road around a lake, guarded at its entrance by a gatekeeper in a little house. Such land use waste is nauseatingly opulent. How do you broach the subject with people who are friendly, welcoming, and hospitable to you? It’s very delicate, yet it’s such an egregious breach of environmental and social justice that it must be addressed. I would be interested to hear your thoughts in the comments.
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