10/26

1. According to Malchik in “March,” why is a community’s walkability “one of the single greatest factors in building social capital” (p. 45)? What is social capital? How do your community’s public infrastructure and public spaces support walkability (or not)? How has your community’s walkability factored in your social capital?

Malchik believes walkability is important to building social capital because, “our brains have evolved to look for our tribes, our communities, and our neighbors to remind ourselves that we’re not alone.” (46) Without the ability to walk around our area and interact with each other, we would not build as strong of a community or social capital. Social capital is essentially how social groups function as a whole. This can be through shared relationships, communal sense of identity, mutual understanding, common norms, and shared values. Good social capital is achieved in a community through cooperation between citizens. My city has enabled walkability by implementing sidewalks and crosswalks for people to travel on busy streets by foot. They have also put many parks in the city, and even some public restrooms. Unfortunately, there are many parts of Milwaukee that the local government does not seem to care much about, and as a result these areas have seen increased crime rates and decreased walkability.

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2. Why is it important for people — including walkers — to think of themselves as citizens? What is the relationship between walking, citizenship, and public space? What does it mean to be a citizen? How is walking tied to your understanding of yourself as a citizen of a particular community?

To be a citizen is to have a sense of belonging or responsibility to one’s community, and to feel the need to contribute to society. Citizens have respect for other members of their community, and for the buildings and nature in the community. Walkers interact physically, hands-on with their community, rather than a person driving a car or truck who only sees the outside through a glass windshield. Because walkers are actively experiencing their environment when travelling through the city, interacting with other people and things, it is important for them to maintain their sense of respect for the community and those in it as a citizen, in order to make it a nice place to be. I feel that in order for a person to feel truly connected to their community, and to thoroughly understand it, they must spend time walking the streets of the city, meeting the people who live there, seeing the different shops and buildings that populate the area, and observing how the citizens of the community interact with one another.

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