But then there was something more, hard to define, and I could feel it was the exact same thing that made the favela in Rio feel special. Like, I know they live in a slum, but they have something we don’t and it might make up for it. Why does this place feel like a proper community where more developed communities fall short?
The Myanmar government does not allow the import of new cars. This means that buying even an old car is very expensive (a waiter said $15,000, but I can’t believe that’s right) and just as expensive is keeping the old car running, considering that parts wear out and there’s a limited supply of replacement parts. Azure and I think the government limits cars because it keeps the people distracted, inefficient, keeps them spending their energy on repairing cars instead of trying to revolt. And if there are just enough cars, then who can complain, really?
The system is a grid with about five main streets running East-West, then about 60 side streets running North-South. On all the streets there is a wide, frustratingly bumpy sidewalk upon which the world sits, chats, eats, cooks, sells, buys and so on. It’s tiring to walk because you have to watch your step, then look up and make sure you’re not walking into a grill, then maybe sidestep a person or hop down on the road to avoid something. Very tiring.
The cars stick almost exclusively to the main streets and they drive like bats out of hell. Imagine that driving down Montlake you discover that 1) 80% of the cars had disappeared and stop lights don’t really matter and 2) there are no traffic cops. Even careful citizens might push 90. Azure and I had a couple scares where it was evident that, no, really, they would hit a pedestrian without slowing down. Noted.
On the side streets, though, there are so few cars that it can be quiet in the middle of the day in the heart of the urban center. You can hear birds flapping their wings. Footsteps might echo between the high buildings. Kids play soccer in the street, people walk down the middle. At dusk, young men run a net across the street to play that foot-volleyball game, taking down one side if a car does come through.
When I first noticed this phenomenon of having fewer cars on the road (and even car-free zones), I wrote in my journal, “This is good for all the reasons that are so obvious that I don’t even need to write it.”
But then I started noticing all the other reasons that people don’t mention in the usual diatribes against cars:
Little people under trees.
Space
First, without cars my concept of the space was scaled down to human size, speed and volume. The city became human-centric, which is really the way a city should be. People walked anywhere safely, they called down the street to each other, they kinda lived out doors. Being outside in the city wasn’t unpleasant, which was kinda a revelation.
In most cities, people are pinned between cars and buildings. People are diminished by cars, they have to give up right of way, even if the law doesn’t say so. They have to, otherwise they’d be killed. Cars are the fastest, biggest, loudest and most dangerous things that are in our physical space. Cars dominate people, period. I hadn’t seen it this way before – I’d always thought, “I need to make sure I don’t get hit by a truck.” I didn’t even question whether a truck should be allowed to dominate human space.
Incense on a tree
Focus
Secondly, the attention of life refocuses on interacting with people. Walking down the street I looked forward to passing someone, to smelling what they were cooking, to kicking the ball away from the kids.
In most cities, yielding to cars tacitly legitimizes the purpose of those cars… cars or trucks will kill many people a year. Why are these bullies even allowed in our space? Commerce. So commerce is important enough to allow people to be penned onto sidewalks. This isn’t overt, it’s subconscious. I’m sure every one of us is thinking, “Yeah, of course I have to let a truck come down my street – they need to do business, after all,” and in the process we give value to conducting business even if it creates a space that’s not conducive to natural social living.
Penned-in.
Movement
Third, humans naturally move in patterns that don’t have anything to do with the patterns of roads. On the side streets in Yangon, people walked down the center of the road. They crossed at a diagonal because there was no rush. Someone might drift a couple feet off the side walk and stop to talk to someone there in the middle of the right lane. Kids played wherever – their ball hitting a wall, bouncing across the street, hitting the other wall.
Before this trip I hadn’t understood that, just because I might be killed, my movements in most urban spaces are completely unnatural.
Presence
Finally, on carless, human-sized street, it’s a lot easier to be mentally present. When we host dinner parties, Azure will often make two rules: 1) Leave your cell phone at the door and 2) don’t make any other plans for later that night. If you can’t follow both these rules, don’t come. The reason she makes these rules is that the experience is so much better if people are thinking about what’s going on here, in front of them, being present.
I found that taking away cars had the same effect.
We walk down the street at a human pace – the bubble of space that we’re conscious of is pretty consistent, about 20 feet in either direction. People see us coming and going, they anticipate us stopping, they anticipate smiling at us. We see food, we smell it, we stop. This is the rhythm of being in one place and moving at human speed.
Cars imply ELSEWHERE. They move so fast that they symbolize coming from somewhere else, going to somewhere else. We sit in one spot at human-scale but they’re engaged in some other activity that has nothing to do us. A passing car implies an origin and a destination, neither of which are HERE. It DIMINISHES the present.
And because they’re the fastest, biggest, loudest and most dangerous things in our physical space, they DISTRACT from the present and demand our attention, even if it’s as slight as changing how we walk.
And why do we sacrifice our space, focus, movement and presence? For ease of commerce. These are four aspects of being human that are tough to measure but have an impact on our mental health. They’re the things I recognized in the Rio favela when I thought, “This neighborhood is different and I can’t figure out why. How is it that I’m envious of the way people are living in a slum? There’s something natural about this life.” It was human-centric space.
I go TO urban areas to experience that street life. Capitol Hill, Queen Ann, San Fran, NYC. And you are right, cars diminish the pleasure of the experience. But I feel hungry for that human pace, space and connection too, so put up with them.
And in another post, that photo of the Highlands was disturbing.
Mom – yeah, that photo is disturbing. It’s even more disturbing to go there, which I do for work sometimes. Mayor Nichols tried to do some car-free weekends in certain neighborhoods, and of course people went nuts accusing him of trying to slow commerce, etc. Ridiculous. You know how his story turned out of course.