A Walking Essay:
I used to think that walking could ruin my life. Now I believe it could change my life for the better.
Over the duration of this course my mind set about walking has done a complete 180. In this essay I will explain how and why my attitudes and beliefs about walking have changed and how the hidden merits of walking have been repressed due to my prejudice about walking.
I want to begin this essay responding to this guided question which queries, “What attitudes and beliefs have you inherited from your family or community regarding exploration, particularly when it comes to exploring (unknown) public spaces? How have these attitudes and beliefs influenced your walking and your experience in public spaces in Chicago? How might these attitudes and beliefs change over time?”
For as long as I can remember I have thought of walking as a chore, unpleasant but necessary. At the beginning of this quarter I remember being asked “Why do people walk?” My response was one, to get from one place to another, two, to get exercise, three, and to practice self care. That is about all I could think of. Back home, in the suburbs of Brookfield Wisconsin, my mom takes walks with her friends on a daily basis and my sister takes walks periodically for exercise and as a stress reliever. My mom however would never let us walk in downtown Milwaukee alone, but during the day in Brookfield is fine. From a very young age my family has told me over and over again to “Always walk in groups! Never walk at night! Don’t walk alone!” Even though my mom and sister would take regular walks alone, I guess I have always had a fearful mindset about walking. I inherited the attitudes and beliefs from my family and just always thought something would happen to me if I was walking alone. In chapter 14 of Walking after midnight the author states “…but most public places at most times have not been as welcoming and as safe for women. Legal measures, social mores subscribed to by both men and women, the threat implicit in sexual harassment, and rape itself have all limited women’s ability to walk where and when they wished. (Women’s clothes and bodily confinements- high heels, tight or fragile shoes, corsets and girdles, very full or narrow skirts, easily damaged fabrics, veils that obscure vision- are part of the social mores that have handicapped women as effectively as laws and fears.)” The author is talking about the role gender plays in walkability. For example, woman may feel less comfortable walking alone or going out at night because there is the possibility they face sexual harassment or sexual assault. This quote explains my previous viewpoint on walking perfectly. I inherited the idea that I, being a woman, would be a target every time I stepped out of the house, which in turn stopped me from going out, and exploring unknown public spaces. These attitudes and beliefs influenced my walking and experience in public spaces in Chicago because I was always on edge. I felt scared to go walk places and would put it off, procrastinating going out.
That brings me to the second part of the essential question, “how might these attitudes and beliefs change over time?” Each week after completing the walking journal assignment and reflecting about my walk I began to see first hand that there are hidden benefits to walking. The biggest “ah-ha” moment for me was when we were learning about social capitals, discussing a city’s walkability, and communicative spaces. I learned to think of walking as an opportunity to build social capital. A social capital is any type of “beneficial interaction” people have with each other even if they are strangers. An example of a social capital is, giving someone something that they dropped, opening the door for someone, giving someone directions, saying hello to the people we know (greet our neighbors), etc. A quote from Materiality and urban communication The rhetoric of communicative spaces — Communication Matters, Gallagher Zagacki Martin states “These tiny, everyday acts are crucial to both building and repairing a life quality that many-perhaps even most-people feel they’ve lost over the last century: a strong sense of community, defined by a quality that in research circles has been termed “social capital.””
A community’s walkability is needed for building a social capital because the more access people have to walk places the more likely you are able to interact with people, or in other words, build up your social capital. Chicago, in comparison to my hometown Brookfield Wisconsin, has a lot more access to sidewalks, walkways, public transportation, public parks, public playgrounds, bikes to rent, scooters to rent, etc. People who live in Chicago have more access to walk, take public transportation, etc.
In Brookfield Wisconsin however, there is more access or it is more normalized to drive from place to place. This community’s (Lincoln Park) walkability factored in my social capital. For example, recently I was going to see the movie “In the Mood For Love” on Friday for a film 101 assignment and I ran into a few friends at Fullerton Station while I was walking there. My friend who is also a film major was also going to see the movie for an assignment, so I ended up going with them rather than alone. If I were to be in Brookfield, I would have to drive to the movie because the sidewalk stops at a certain point. If I drove to the movie I then would have most likely not have run into my friends and would have ended up going alone. Because Chicago is a big city there is more access to walk places because there are more sidewalks, crossways, public transportation, etc. Without knowing it I have been exposing myself to opportunities to expand my social capital, which in turn makes me feel as though I am a part of the community and helps me feel as though I fit and have a place here in Chicago.
Much like walkability, communicative spaces play a part in increasing one’s social capital. Gallager, the author of Materiality and urban communication The rhetoric of communicative spaces — Communication Matters and her co-authors define “communicative spaces” as spaces within cities that enable citizens to engage communicatively. Simply put, a communicative space is any public place where you can congregate, interact, and encounter others. Some examples of a communicative space are a park or the common room/lounge in my dorm. In A Waking Life, Milchik explains “communicative cities and the public parks that comprise them constitute places in which “to encounter others” (ibid.: 198), to encourage “civic engagement” (ibid.: 199), and to enhance “identity and identification.” Milchik explains why a communicative space is important. He describes how a communicative space is important for they serve as places to encounter others, to encourage civic engagement, and to strengthen your identity. In other words, communicative spaces provide an outlet to increasing one’s social capital.
An example of a communicative space I found in Lincoln Park is a small park in between buildings called Icky Park. This is an example of a communicative space because it is a place where people can encounter and interact with others. Furthermore, because the park is between buildings, people who live in the apartments surrounding the park can interact with other people who also live in the same area or in the same apartment building. What a lot of apartments lack are communicative spaces where people in the building can get that chance to interact or meet their neighbors. What a communicative space, like Icky Park does, is it allows people from the same building or same area to have a shared space in which they can meet each other and be neighborly.
All and all the way in which I view walking has changed for the better. I no longer see walking as a chance my life could be over. I would hesitate, and overthink, which then would sometimes stop me from going out all together. The issue with this is that because I would stop myself from going out, I would also stop myself from increasing my social capital. Now I have a new answer to the question “Why do people walk?” and that answer is so I can have small interactions with people that improve the quality of life. The more I expose myself to the city around me, the more comfortable I feel taking advantage of its walkability, exposing myself to communicative spaces, thus increasing my social capital.
