Walking here and there

After reading “The Solitary Stroller and the City” I would like to comment on two aspects of the article:
1.) I really liked the author’s description of what it feels like to come home to your hometown after being away for some time. I moved out of my hometown almost 5 years ago and lived abroad for a while and it really is a strange feeling to be returning home after that. You do “begin to see it as a stranger might”, because to some extend you have been made into stranger by all the new experiences and the changes in the city that have naturally occurred in the meantime. However, much has changed, it is still the same city and it remains your home. It will be the same when I go home after my time here in Canada.

2.) Walking around a city really has only two purposes. Either it is to get somewhere (in case of a business) or it about the walking itself (walking for pleasure). The author concentrated on the second kind of walking, so I will do the same. Walking in Edmonton has, at least for me, a different feel to it than walking in city in Germany. I admit that I’m not a big walker and don’t go on strolls unless forced to (which unfortunately for me happens quite often back home :-)) and I haven’t spent much time in the River Valley, but I still feel that Edmonton isn’t the friendliest town for walkers. Due to the grid system, you always have to walk next to a street (excluding the River Valley here, but that seems to be one of the only place) and the walker is constantly disturbed by the traffic (Edmonton really needs more crossovers of people on foot). In my home town you can walk at great length away from the traffic, because we have parks all over the place that are not just squares and actually connect the different parts of the city. There are also a larger number of back alleys that you can walk through undisturbed and where you can cut across and shorten the walk to a certain destination. There are underground walk ways so people can avoid the major streets or railways and or the can walk along the river. Here in Edmonton everything is laid out for being reachable by car (not a bad thing when you’re a driver) and as lot of space is taken up by smaller parking lots. At home, we tend to have one less but bigger parking lots and most of them are underground, so that they don’t take up any space. And we have more areas where there are no cars at all. In my hometown the city center (our downtown) is completely off limits for cars (well ok there are delivery cars, but they are only allowed into the center from 6am to 9am in the morning). It’s a wide open road where people walk, sit outside in front of cafes or go window-shopping without being disturbed by any car. You can enjoy walking there in the summer, especially if you do not walk in order to just to appreciate nature, which you can do enough in the parks. Last, but not least, walking here is different, because you see a lot less people walking in the streets. Walking is a lot more solitary here.
Now this is not at all meant as a critique, I’m only describing the differences I observes concerning walking in this city. As I said I’m not a big walker and thus couldn’t care less, about some of these aspects, but I know people who wouldn’t like walking in Edmonton at all.