There’s an expression in baseball:
“Good things happen when you put the ball in play.”
Legend has it that in 1900, Andy Oyler of the minor-league Minneapolis Millers hit a ball approximately 24 inches and was able to run all the way around the bases before the opposing team found the ball in two feet of mud.
It was as far from going over the fence as you can possibly imagine. But they all count the same.
Of course, it’s possible to hit the baseball and have bad things happen. But if you strike out, the possibility of a positive outcome goes out the window.
You never know what can happen when you put the ball in play. It’s true in baseball, it’s true in life, and it’s true in making better cities.
What if you mail your mayor a book like Strong Towns or Missing Middle Housing and they actually read it? What if you email your councilmember about a new bike lane and they actually start advocating for it?
The places we long to live in will never be built if we leave the bat on our shoulders. Take a swing.
One Thing to Get Excited About:
I love me some great pictures of the beautiful architecture and bike lanes of Europe.
But “Urbanism Twitter” can often give off the impression that America has no great urban design worth celebrating, which of course is utter nonsense.
To celebrate the Fourth of July, I compiled some of my personal favorite examples of Great American Urbanism, which you can find on Twitter:
If you have your own personal favorites, leave them in the replies or comment below!
One Action to Get You Started:
My local Kroger grocery store is in a great location, within a mile of several thousand residents of our town.
The problem is most residents cannot access the grocery store without driving.
When it comes to getting a great ROI on investing in walk-and-bike infrastructure, there’s arguably no better candidate in my town than sidewalks and bike lanes connecting Kroger to the surrounding neighborhoods. It would also reduce countless trips from the second highest-trafficked road in our city.
That’s what I’ll be spending the next several months bothering local officials about, and I’m challenging you to do the same in your town:
What’s one resource in your town (grocery store, school, etc.) that is centrally located but essentially impossible to access without a vehicle?
Make note of it, and raise it as an opportunity to your local officials. Write your mayor. Write your councilmember. Write your planning commission. Put the ball in play and see what happens.
One Resource to Check Out:
Nolan Gray lays out a compelling case for doing away with zoning in the U.S. in his new book Arbitrary Lines, which I highly recommend reading in its entirety.
A free excerpt from the book also recently appeared as a standalone article in The Atlantic, which you can check out for free: