City Sidewalks By Rebecca Solnit: An Analysis

Walking isn’t just a way to get from point A to point B, it is a cultural aesthetic that is important to our way of life. Walking as a cultural aspect of life is one of the many points that Rebecca Solnit makes in “Walking and the Suburbanized Psyche”, along with walking being essential to our bodies, minds and spirits. Solnit goes on to say that if walking continues to be devalued by our society that not only will walking as a leisure activity fade but so will our physical health, mental health and interaction with the outside world. As generic as the term might seem, the actual idea of walking is more complex than we realize. Solnit dives in to this complex idea and cultural aesthetic and persuades readers on the significance of it in our

In “Learning Responsibility on City Sidewalks”, author Jane Jacobs talks about civic responsibility and says, “Such instruction must come from society itself….” (Jacobs 121). Civic responsibility is being responsible for what goes on in your community and watching out for the people in it. This is important in our society because it’s a fundamental key to upholding certain values that make up a successful community. Walking around or being present in your community brings a new-found awareness and pride that not only helps you flourish but your community as well. Coming to UC Riverside was new and the value I had for it wasn’t very high. It was only when I started walking around campus and meeting people that my value for the school went up. Now I love my school and I’m interested in maintaining the success of it. Without walking the relationship we have with our community will be

Nature is everywhere. It’s the air that we breathe and the ground we walk on. And although nature does create many inconveniences for us, we should embrace those inconveniences and see them as positive things in life. In “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed she says, “The wilderness had a clarity that included me.” At this point in time walking isn’t just walking it’s about what you see and how you feel. Nature provides this sense of clarity and a positive essence that we don’t even realize we need. For example, when it rains the first emotion people might feel is frustration because we tend to view rain as a negative thing. However, if you really take the chance to walk in the rain and be embodied in it, you start to ask yourself “why is the rain so beautiful.” The rain doesn’t have to be a start to a bad day but a start to a good one full of clarity and happiness. With this new-found happiness we start to appreciate the environment because of the joy nature brings to us. If we walked more we would be more embodied in nature and then we would start to care more about the environment. Today we hurt our environment by polluting the air, wasting resources and being ignorant to what goes on in our environment. Walking continues its side effect in the sense that once we are embodied in it we start to care more for it and once we care for it nature continues to nurture us. To be embodied in nature is to be