Ok, so my topic is a little different to the usual, but this really erks me! How can we design a city or town that allows no safe passage for walkers or pedestrians? In Durbanville finding ONE pavement is hard to do, and when you DO find one, it terminates onto a road without more pavement within a block or two. Worse to me is how the town or city councils seem to have plans for wheelchair users or pram-pushing parents on one pavement, that they then forget 10 meters further when the pavement terminates! So you either get a nice wheel access lower area when you arrive at the elusive Durbanville pavement or when you leave it, never both.
So here’s the issue in historic terms as it seems to me – was it because we frowned on walking in the past? Maybe we thought only non-whites walked? So we disregarded their needs as ’second-class’ citizens, and never planned pavements at all. If you’re white you’ll drive around, not walk, so pavements are not required? Well, if this was true of our past city/town planners it really has caught up with them now, and they should be lined up and shot, the lot of them. Not only because of their blatant discriminative attitude then, but also because they were obviously poorly qualified, and I do hope I offend the lot of them with this paragraph. How can you plan a city or town without proper pedestrian access?
If history is to be forgiven and we not shoot these planners, we still have a problem that will only grow worse now. Fuel prices are going to continue a steep climb with very small downward trends as oil gets scarcer and scarcer, and people, white, black, brown, yellow, whatever color, will be walking much much more! I live in a new part of Durbanville, after living for most of my life in Kenridge, and I see LESS room for pedestrian needs now than I do in the old neighbourhoods! And if men find this post ridiculous in topic, let me challenge you to take the children for a walk like your wife or housekeeper may be doing each day, or take the walk down to the kids school and see just how unsafe it is for pedestrians around our beloved town.
Enough is enough! Someone with pedestrian experience needs to be our next town planner so that we can see some changes, because we will soon have more walkers than drivers at the rate of oil price increases, and currently they will be forced to do most of their walking on open roads! Here’s a thought, maybe we should pray that more women are promoted into these positions! It could just help a change in the right direction.
Tags: De Lange, driving, durbanville, family, pavements, pedestrian, planning, poor, rights, town, walking
