In Defense of Slow Walkers
Before maskless pedestrians inspired mass hatred, we aimed our animus at the slow walker. Let’s take the current moment as an opportunity to imagine public spaces as more inclusive, humane, and safe for people of all speeds.
Even before COVID, we had a hard time sharing space in New York. In particular, ill will for slow walkers seemed to be universal. A group of tourists absentmindedly taking up the entire width of a sidewalk, or a fellow commuter checking their phone in the doorway of a subway could send even the most congenial New Yorker into a rage. Online commenters ranted about those who selfishly dawdle, mosey, and loiter. The sort of people who manage to arrive at subway turnstiles completely unprepared to swipe, oblivious to the crush of people behind them.
I admit that I, too, was prey to the condition that University of Hawaiʻi psychologist Leon James calls “sidewalk rage.” I’d let out an audible huff when someone on an escalator obstructed me, or the person walking in front of me just inexplicably … stopped. I was as impatient as everyone else.
Then I became pregnant.
Pregnancy — accompanied as it can be with tender, swollen breasts, smell aversions, constipation, reduced mobility, cramps, and needing to pee every ten minutes — substantially limits daily activities. In other words, it’s basically a disability. In fact, the Americans with Disabilities Act dictates that pregnant employees be treated the same as people with a temporary disability.
After I became pregnant, I got a window into how people with disabilities are treated — and into my own previous attitude. People would race to get a seat on the train before me, tailgate disturbingly close behind, and inch their right-turning cars into the crosswalk while I was still in it.
Disability isn’t the only reason for slow walking. People do it for all sorts of reasons. A Reddit forum that invited slow walkers to explain themselves elicited responses like, “I’m short,” “I like to wear high heels,” and “Life’s about the going, not the doing. What’s the rush?” Before I walked — slowly — in others’ footsteps I didn’t see that a slow gait was not a reason to condemn strangers as lazy and self absorbed.
I’d ask anyone who harbors hostility toward slow walkers to direct it instead at pedestrian-unfriendly cities that impede walkers of all speeds. The urban landscape is full of dangers and inconveniences for all of us: sandwich boards blocking wheelchairs and confusing the blind, cyclists with no bike lanes forced to choose between the sidewalk or risking their lives, and construction sites that close sidewalks altogether. We all deserve signals that give us enough time to cross the street. We could all benefit from “daylighting” intersections, i.e., leaving the parking spot closest to the intersection open so that drivers and pedestrians can see one another.
COVID has unexpectedly highlighted the importance of public spaces, and introduced a new set of norms, including giving each other a wide berth, awkwardly walking in the street if necessary. But who gets to lay claim to the sidewalk and who gets forced dangerously into the street?
New York City has instituted “Open Streets,” for pedestrian-only use during the COVID outbreak. Could they become permanent? Pandemics in the past have led to reimagined cities. Paris’s wide boulevards, parks, and fountains arose in response to a cholera outbreak, as Ginia Bellafante recently pointed out in the New York Times. In the meantime, pedestrianized streets are one silver lining for us slow walkers.
The question of sharing public space has become even more urgent as Black Lives Matter protestors in the streets have met with police violence in cities across the country. This urgency of this social movement, combined with the upheavals of the pandemic, has the potential to remake the streets and the entire society that the streets were built for. Who knows what things will look like when we come out on the other side of this, but my hope is that we’ll finally wake up and make room for everybody.
