Member-only story
It’s Not the City — It’s the Cars
A world built for automobiles is stressful
There’s an intersection in my small Montana town that is an absolute nightmare. It’s where a busy highway crawls into downtown and makes a hard 90-degree bend. All four incoming roads coming into the intersection have a left- and/or right-turn lane. Trying to cross this intersection as a pedestrian or cyclist from any direction feels — and is — risky, every single time. And not only is it in the middle of a compact, walkable tourist town with a lot of pedestrian traffic during the summer, this particular intersection is directly in front of the middle school. It’s the main route home, to the playground, and to after-school activities for many kids.
It feels so dangerous — and is so dangerous — that many kids, including my own, simply refuse to use it, taking a longer route with less traffic and a crossing guard farther up the road.
When I came across a Psychology Today article declaring that urban settings aren’t necessarily more exhausting than natural ones, I thought instantly of this intersection. Not to be too damning either of the article (which came with a lot of caveats) or the study it was based on, but the whole premise is absurd. In order to gauge stress levels, the researchers had participants come to a controlled environment and walk toward pictures of…
