Posts Tagged ‘car culture’

December 18, 2012

Is Boosterism Good for Phoenix?

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Boosterism: The enthusiastic promotion of a person, organization, or cause (in this case of a city) If you don’t have only good things to say about Phoenix and you purport to be an activist, you might be considered cynical or worse, a hypocrite, lazy or ineffective. But I think boosterism is dangerous to the progress of Phoenix because it leads to delusion, which may feel good now but isn’t conducive to moving forward. Knowing where you are now is the first step to making constructive change. The same goes for Phoenix. We have to know where we are now,…

April 27, 2011

The Costs of Owning a Car

by: Taz Loomans

March 30, 2011

Car-Free Stories: A Seatless Bicycle and the Stigma of Cycling for Women

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet On Wednesdays, I usually post an update on the Castaway House. But our team is still in the middle of choosing a contractor to work with, so I’ll give you an update next time. Today, I’d like to share a car-free story with you. Yesterday at around 2:00pm, I said goodbye to my friends Kathleen and Doreen and walked over to my bike that was tied to the sign post at La Condesa. I put my computer and gunny sack into my big silver basket and proceeded to unlock my bike, like I usually do. But then it struck…

January 26, 2011

How Phoenix became a City of Freeways and not Rail Transit

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Believe it or not Phoenix was one of the last major cities in the country to complete its freeway system. By the 1960s Phoenix still didn’t have many freeways other than the 1-17. Starting to learn lessons from other parts of the country, especially LA, many in Phoenix weren’t sure that adding freeways would be a good answer to our people-moving dilemma. “…by the later 1960s, people in many cities were beginning to see that near total reliance on the automobile for transportation imposed significant unanticipated costs. Many people now regretted the decisions to bulldoze older neighborhoods that resulted…

January 24, 2011

Car Free Stories: The Virtue of the Bell and the Hazards of Intersections

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet This is the second installment in my Car Free Stories series. Check out the first here. Recently I got a bell for my bike and what a transformative experience it’s been! Before, when people were in front of me on a sidewalk, I yelled (respectfully), “excuse me! excuse me!”. Nine times out of ten this wouldn’t work and I’d just have to slow down and wait for an opportunity to pass the seemingly deaf pedestrian. Now that I have a bell, I’ll ring it once and the astute ones will hear it and get out of the way. I…

November 01, 2010

Cultivating Direct Experiences and Propinquity in Phoenix

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet According to Carol Venolia in her article Real Time in Natural Home Magazine, modern day society is moving away from direct experiences, such as actually spending time with our friends, and moving more towards indirect experiences such as chatting online instead. This distancing from real experiences, the author argues, creates a less satisfying and perhaps somewhat of a distorted life. The idea of direct versus indirect experiences is very much tied into the concept of propinquity which was first introduced to me by Kevin Kellogg. Propinquity, if you’re unfamiliar with the word, “refers to the physical or psychological proximity…

July 13, 2010

Why is Walking such an Alien Experience in Phoenix?

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Last week my friend Kevin Kellogg, the urban laureate at the Stardust Center, and I needed to find a place that was showing the World Cup semi-final match between the Netherlands and Uruguay. I was, as usual, officing out of Lux Coffee Bar that morning. Kevin suggested we watch the match at George & Dragon (G & D), the British pub on Central north of Indian School. It’s a classic venue to watch the World Cup. It occurred to me that Lux was close enough to G & D to walk! I know this should not have been such…