OCTOBER 2021

Having spent my early life on a remote British hill farm, at the age of eight I became an urbanist. My college-educated parents realized that their most successful crop from the farming years was five children. Then they realized that high school would involve a two-mile hike to the train station, a ten-mile ride on the train, another walk from train to school, and the reverse in the evening. In winter this travel would all be in the dark. Since high school begins at age 11 for British kids, and my older sister was 10, it triggered a big re-thinking of their “back to the land” life plan.

We gave up the farm and moved to York, a city of 93,000 people. At first, I walked to the elementary school, about half a mile away. It was close enough that we could come home for lunch. I had a kick-scooter for longer errands such as fetching our daily newspaper. High school was completely the opposite side of this Victorian-walled city, and while Mum gave us bus money, if we walked, we could keep it. So, my older sister and I learned the fastest walking route to and fro, and most of the time that was how we commuted to school. It took us through ancient streets, including a very short street with a very long name, WhipMaWhopMaGate, through York’s famous Shambles, past the stately York Minster, through two of the walled city “bars” or entry-gates, past the River Ouse, past the main public library, past butcher shops, cafés and hair salons –a scenic trip every day through some of the loveliest and most varied sights of the city.

Walking on the York walls was another delight. The walls brought us to the Quaker Meeting House, to the Kirk Museum where my father worked; to the main shopping areas and the weekly farmers’ market. In the spring the grassy wall foundations were alive with waving daffodils.

Had we stayed on the farm, I don’t suppose I’d have gone after graduate degree in urban planning, which I ultimately did at Glasgow University.

Urban strategic planning in tiny Britain (not much bigger than Rhode Island but with ~70 million people) is generally called Town and Country Planning, with a lot of emphasis on keeping town and country as separate as possible through green belts and other strong land use controls. It’s changed in the 50 years since I lived there, but not as much as one might expect, with suburban sprawl being kept to a minimum despite growing car ownership.

This was my foundation, upon finding myself an urban and transportation planner in the US. Inevitably my thinking was shaped by living in a beautiful, compactly-designed system where government strategic urban planning was expected, and the pleasures of urban life taken for granted.