The Purpose of this Substack

Seeing Streets Is My Occupational Hazard

Welcome to my Substack where I will share thoughts, observations, examples and tools I’m playing around with to help redesign streets so that more people can walk, bike, and roll more of the time. Hopefully you can look at some of my perspectives or examples and apply them to your own contexts. I like to keep in mind that for most communities, those under the age of 16 have basically have no ability to fully access and participate in their community without an adult who owns a car and has the time to act as a driver. Collectively, we are really depriving our next generations of something critically important – agency in the places they live. We do this to our aging community as well, who often hold onto their car (if they have one) longer than they or we desire because it functionally is the only access to community life because we have methodically designed out our individual and collective ability to participate fully in our community if we don’t own a car. How sad. (And to be transparent, I am of AARP age according to AARP, though a ways off from retirement.)

Of course, if we are able to redesign our streets so that our youth and our seniors can access their communities, then we are probably designing these public spaces so that almost all of us can get around for many, if not most, of our daily trips without a car as well. So, enjoy what is here and let me know if you have questions, stories to share, or collaboration ideas.

And if you want to learn more about me, my professional background, and the different organizations or efforts I’ve been invovled in to help communities apply knowledge to their own local practice, you can go to my general web site.

Finally, and this is purely for you: I really hope that something unexpectedly good or joyful or intriguing has been part of your day today.

Marc Schlossberg, PhD
Professor, City & Regional Planning, University of Oregon
Co-Director, Sustainable Cities Institute (SCI), University of Oregon