Skip to Content
Streetsblog California home
Streetsblog California home
Log In
Podcast

Talking Headways Podcast: Walking with Pedestrian Dignity

This week, Jonathon Stalls, author of "Walk: Slow Down, Wake Up, and Connect at 1-3 Miles Per Hour," talks about his work on social media with Pedestrian Dignity and his walk across the United States in 2010.

For an edited transcript, see below the audio player. For a full, unedited transcript, click here.

Jeff Wood: Well, [nature] creates safety. That was another theme that permeated the book, but also [the theme of] not being safe. I mean, you almost get run over by a truck, the experiences that you have on your Tik Tok channel, those types of things. I’m wondering how safe you feel on walks generally; in nature, it’s easy to be safe because you’re among the trees and everything else, but on roads when you’re interacting with vehicles and two-ton giants, how often do you feel safe?

Jonathon Stalls: That’s a great question. The safety piece is so huge and I’m always thinking about being a white man in the world and being of any other race or gender or orientation or someone with disability of various kinds. Moving through safety is just this huge, important, complicated, rough edge. Especially thinking about the built environment and car-centric built environment in terms of how that edge just continues to be rough [and] to be really disconnected from humble human frames moving through space and time. I had never done any urban-planning study, public-health study, engineering study prior to this walk.

I had a mixed experience growing up, both in cars and on transit, but I just hadn’t had a heavy lens on pedestrian mobility. I don’t know how many degrees of lived experience, education, related to, and this connects to the campaign that I work on a lot, pedestrian dignity, the dignity of a human body moving from A to B, the safety elements were often daily, hard, complicated, outrageous in so many ways. I mean, literally outrageous, Jeff! It was like just going into one town, city, suburb after the other, just hit, cut and paste on how outrageous the environments are against a pedestrian, unless you’re hanging out just on a main street, but even those main streets can be really rough.

If you’re hanging out in an urban core, you get a little closer, but even those urban cores can be so disconnected [when one is] thinking about public restrooms and access to water and seating and full accessibility for all mobility users. I’m somebody that carries energy in my body, as you can tell, I get loud and I grunt. So... all the time on this walk, [I] very much [experienced] the beauty, as we talked about — the trees and the sky and the people in the flow — but then obviously the slam contrast of literally being bypassed, unseen, sprayed, almost ran over an uncountable number of times.

Stay in touch

Sign up for our free newsletter

More from Streetsblog California

Covina to Begin Construction on Recreation Village

The new facility will be next to the Metrolink station and include a variety of opportunities for fitness and amusement

July 26, 2024

Talking Headways Podcast: Have Cities Run Out of Land?

Chris Redfearn of USC and Anthony Orlando of Cal Poly Pomona on why "pro-business" Texas housing markets are catching up to "pro-regulation" California and what it might mean for future city growth.

July 26, 2024

Friday’s Headlines

Oakland identifies sites for speed camera pilot; E-bike tariffs conflict with US climate policy; Pollution spikes around warehouses, shipping hubs; More

July 26, 2024

What the Heck is Going on with the State E-bike Incentive Program?

The program's launch has been delayed for two years, and currently "there is no specific timeline" for it. Plus the administrator, Pedal Ahead, is getting dragged, but details are vague

July 26, 2024

The Paris Plan for Olympic Traffic? Build More Bike Lanes

A push to make Paris fully bikable for the Olympics is already paying dividends long before the opening ceremonies.

July 25, 2024
See all posts