Sunday, June 10, 2012

The Vicious Cycle.

This is the most gleefully whimsical little video I've had on repeat for a while.


Hard to remember being that small, or the the utter surprise of true hide and seek.  I love how she goes to the last place she saw her father.

But, of course, I picked up on something else - what appears to be a successful family living in a pretty cozy apartment.  Nice stuff.  The dad is involved in some pretty interesting tech work (prompting the video).  All sharing a bedroom and some limited space.

We have a couple of little ones, and moved out to the suburbs to give them enough room.  It's a very American way of thinking about it, and one that I wish we could shake.  There are four of us in a 2,000 square foot house.  I'm not convinced we need this much interior.  We also have a quarter acre of land.  I'm not sure we need this much exterior either.

There is a 45 foot wide road in front of the house with a 25 mile per hour speed limit.  People read the size of the road, the big line down the middle, and floor it.  Our road leads to an even larger divided arterial.  That leads to an even wider freeway.  You have to cross all of these things to get to the nearest convenience store.

Another way of thinking about it, between me and that convenience store are 75 houses.  If we were all in apartments like the one in the video, we could actually walk to the store.  And if we were walking to the store, our roads wouldn't need to be so big as to accommodate all the people driving to the convenience store.  Which would make the walk to the convenience store even nicer, prompting more walking, and so on.

Walking.  Reasonable living.  Nice places.  Truly a vicious cycle.  

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