Is your neighborhood pedestrian-friendly? Or do you fear for your life every time you go for a walk or bike ride? Find out why cities are on a quest to become more walkable.

You’ve heard it said before, “Location is everything.” This use to be the mantra of businesses, but in a time of rapidly growing cities, it’s becoming the rallying cry of individuals and families as well. Rather than being concerned about proximity to the interstate and amount of free parking, people are more focused on how pedestrian-friendly a community is. When it’s easy to walk, bike or take public transit wherever you need to go, living greener becomes that much more convenient. As the economic and environmental benefits of urban density become more apparent, neighborhoods are doing all they can to become more walkable.

What’s a Walkable Neighborhood?

There are many different factors that affect the walkability of a community. Most urban planners agree that a combination of most of the below characteristics is vital:

• A center: Walkable neighborhoods have a center, whether it’s a main street or a public space.
• People: Enough people for businesses to flourish and for public transit to run frequently.
• Mixed income, mixed use: Affordable housing located near businesses.
• Parks and public space: Plenty of public places to gather and play.
• Pedestrian design: Buildings are close to the street, parking lots are relegated to the back.
• Schools and workplaces: Close enough that most residents can walk from their homes.
• Complete streets: Streets designed for bicyclists, pedestrians, and transit.

Sadly, it’s become increasingly hard to find neighborhoods, never mind entire cities, that live up to these requirements. The good news is, that’s changing as developers and city governments realize the benefits of walkability.

Benefits of a Walkable Neighborhood

• Increased property values: when walkability goes up, traffic noise, traffic speeds, and vehicle-generated air pollution go down. Over time, this has a positive impact on property values because it creates a place people want to live and raise their families.
• It’s a tourist magnet: When friends come to town, you know where we always take them? The Old Town portion of our community. Why? Because we can easily walk from shop to restaurant to music venue without the hassle of parking. It’s also where all of our favorite locally-owned businesses are located. Which brings us to…
• It’s good for the local economy: WalkBoston’s Good Walking is Good Business brochure provides data and statistics on the important connection between walkability and economic prosperity. The numbers are astounding and prove this is a wise investment. Dollar for dollar, the returns of a walkable neighborhood are impressive, from more customers to healthier, more productive employees.
• It’s safer and healthier: less motorized vehicle traffic and proper infrastructure makes people more willing to utilize alternative transportation. They’re also more likely to venture outside, walk or run down the sidewalks, getting to know neighbors and business owners along the way.

Interested in more benefits? Check out this list from America Walks.

So, How Walkable is Your Neighborhood?

Walk Score is an amazing online platforms that allows you to see how pedestrian-friendly neighborhood is with just a few clicks. If you’re thinking about relocating, make this essential step a part of your real estate search.

Related on Ecosalon:

3o Quotes About The Joys Of Taking A Walk

Take A Better Walk With Street-Rating Mobile Apps

Walking Meditation

Image: faunng’s photo

The post How Walkable is Your ‘Hood? 4 Benefits of Pedestrian-Friendly Communities appeared first on EcoSalon.

Money doesn’t grow on trees, but the excess fruit from a neighbor’s yard can make your diet richer and it won’t cost a dime. Shouldn’t we share the wealth?

That’s the thinking of Neighborhood Fruit, created by San Francisco urban farmers to reduce the tragic waste of fruit, which is forbidden in their vision of sustainability. Their website lets subscribers find and share fruit locally both in backyards and on public lands.

Since planting the seed in June, they’ve attracted between 3,000 and 5,000 visitors a month and located a total of 10,000 trees nationwide and growing.

Much of the fruit the nation consumes is grown in water-intensive orchards far from our homes and shipped at the high cost of fuel. Instead, co-founder Kaytea Petro sees a future where the bulk of seasonal backyard fruit is utilized and shared between neighbors for snacking, baking, putting up organic preserves, even setting up a lemonade stand – any good uses you might have for the bounty.

“I first thought of the idea when I lived on Bernal Hill and my neighbor had an apple tree with a lot of excess fruit that she would never share,” says Petro, who decided to refine the fruit network notion for her graduate thesis at the Presidio School of Management, where she received an MBA in sustainable business.

“We’re a nationwide tool that helps people connect locally,” says Petro. “The typical user is someone with a plum tree who knows what a pain it is when the fruit comes in because it all comes in at once. Those seeking the fruit are into making pies and jams or to show their city kids where food comes from.”

The mechanics of connecting are simple. I register my lemons and oranges and when the fruit arrives, I put out the word on the site. “Come and get it!” I decide if I want to pick it myself or have interested takers come over with their bushels to help pick what they want.

It seems to be attracting those who don’t want to go through the red tape of becoming a registered producer who sells at the farmers’ market, the only way to sell fruit legally.

“It can be a lot of paperwork,” observes Petro, who adds that 25% of her users are people with fruit trees. And for obvious reasons, those with trees in L.A., Miami and Austin see more of a year-round yield than those in Boston and Seattle.

In addition to making connections, Petro and co-founder, Oriana Sarac, manage a monthly newsletter, The Grapevine, featuring the voices of gardeners, bee keepers and other experts in the field, as well as a blog for sharing timely articles, recipes and success stories.

They call their neighbor fruit sharing network Fruitfillment. Anyone who believes in this vision for making use of our abundance knows the ripe concept is fulfilling a mission, indeed.

Images: DieselDemon, Seph Swain, Neighborhood Fruit

The post Forget Borrowing a Cup of Sugar When Neighbors Are Giving Away Fruit! appeared first on EcoSalon.

Perhaps it’s the fact the yard is covered with green grass, which is a water no-no in my world, yet a feature imposed by our homeowner association regulations. How we’d love to replace it with artichokes and succulents.

Maybe it’s because my garage is in the back of the house and leads to the backdoor entrance. That sure makes it convenient for unloading backpacks and groceries.

I suppose both of these excuses keep me from perching on the brick steps out front, except once in a blue moon, like on the magical night of Halloween, when hundreds of candy-crazed strangers travel to our “safe” suburban neighborhood to trick-or-treat up and down the tree-lined streets.

Yes, my front yard has practically become a stranger to me, nearly a decade after the baby-rearing years when my girls ran wild with the Bernsteins, the Murphys and the Ritters, the sidewalks their playgrounds for colorful chalk graffiti and clunky, three-wheel vehicles.

It’s kind of eerie how people don’t venture out front anymore.

The children in those other families have gone off to college. They’re the same children that showed up at my front door when my first daughter was born, asking “Can we see the baby, Mrs. Bradley?” Before going away, they had graduated from a variety of private schools in the city. When I was growing up, every kid on my block went to the same public school.

Our pediatrician, who lives in the hood, came over when both daughters were born and delivered hand-knit sweaters she had made for them in her spare time. We no longer go to her house for annual neighborhood Christmas parties. We just see her face when the girls contract a bug, break an arm or crush a finger in a door.

Sure, once in a while, I park at the curb or a soccer mom picks the girls up out front, and I wave to Mrs. Bernstein across the street. But on most days, I shuttle them through the back.

Once inside the back door, my daughters quickly become shut-ins, burdened with hours of homework, entertained after with hours of FarmVille or shows like NCIS. When I was growing up, everyone ran out front after homework, playing ball in the street, climbing trees and doing cartwheels or just shooting the breeze on the curb.

What has changed for me and my family?

Is it having personal computers that lure us into a false sense of “community connection” that actually keeps us from having a real one in our very own neighborhoods? Is it the security issue which gives parents a false sense of panic over children being abducted on their lawns by a stranger? Calming that hysteria is the subject of the eye-opening book, Free Range Kids.

I know it’s not just a city thing because last Friday night, on our way to a friend’s home for dinner, we drove down a thoroughly urban street where parents with toddlers were hanging out on their stoop, the children playing and the dad pouring his wife a glass of red wine.

I felt envious. Here I live in one of the most coveted neighborhoods of San Francisco, and I’m lacking all that I truly desire on a Friday evening: the family outside taking in the sunset, sipping organic wine, moving to the rhythm of a glider, and waving hello to other families doing the same. I guess you could say I need to move to the country. But, then again, think of that couple on their stoop on Divisadero Street.

The concept of the country can and should always be in our minds. It is that concept that keeps neighbor connected with neighbor, every night, not just that one October night when we venture out to the stoop.

This is the latest entry in Luanne Bradley’s column, Life in the Green Lane.

Images: tomask, Luanne Bradley

The post Mourning Time on My Porch: Does Anyone Play Out Front Anymore? appeared first on EcoSalon.