Smokin’ | Nov 8th at 10:51am
During several of my conversations over the last two days, the metaphor of smoking has been brought up. One conference attendee raised it in the context of design research. The ban on smoking came only after years of intensive research proved that cigarettes were dangerous, she noted, and after political advocacy pushed the non-smoking agenda. We knew that smoking was bad for us, we got it on some level, but it took decades to tip the scales. Today, she argues, we need to apply that same rigor to researching design problems and to making the connection between the built environment and public health.
This morning Clive Doucet, Councilor from the City of Ottawa, Canada gave an impassioned talk about the need for more walkable communities. He told stories about the vibrancy and health of the streetcar neighborhood where he grew up and still lives, and he contrasted that experience to the newer, Big Box sprawl developments of today. “The shopping centers we’re building now are called Power Centers and you could land a B52 in them,” he said. “They make our old malls look like community centers.”
This development is driven, of cource, by an artery of highways, what Doucet calls the “trillion dollar heart of our carbon problem.” The streetcars are long gone, but the sprawl continues. “I don’t believe it’s really understood even by the talented people today how grave the impact of the decline of the streetcar was for cities,” he added.
After the talk, I spoke briefly with Stephen Goldsmith, a former Harvard Loeb fellow and an extremely articulate thinker on cities. In his wonderful way of synthesizing problems, he connected our car culture to—you guessed it—smoking. “Cars are the new cigarette. We have to teach people that cars are cancerous.”
Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson writes about architecture and design for publications like The New York Times Magazine, Architect, and Metropolis. In addition to her own blog, Urban Palimpsest, Dickinson is a regular contributor to the Metropolis blog, P/O/V.
John Reinhardt in Washington, DC on Sun, Nov 09, 2008 at 7:20am
Great post, Elizabeth. The need for collaboration between public health and design experts is apparent, for many reasons.
I see the parallels between those who say “people will never walk/bike/take the bus - it’s not in the culture” and those who said “you will never ban smoking in New York/Baltimore/Philadelphia/Ireland (!) - it’s too ingrained in the culture.” Last time I came home from a night out, my clothes smelled just fine - and that was a wonderful thing!