Walking Society

One of the things which I have been most struck by in our stay in London is the emphasis placed upon non-automobile transportation. Between the metro-line, rent-a-bike stations, and the congestion charge for taking your car into certain areas of the city, this is a society which is certainly exploring alternate forms of transit. Now, that's not to say that people don't drive here in London,  for they most certainly do, rather, that the way that the city has developed has made it more important to explore and use alternate forms of transit.

One thing that has occurred due to this emphasis on public forms of transit was the advent of the coffee shop and corner grocer. You can rarely travel three blocks without running into a Starbucks, Eat, Pret a Manger, or a Costa coffee shop. I certainly do not have a problem with this abundance of cafes, I simply find it to be odd to constantly finding myself turning the corner to bump into yet another coffee shop. Of course, with so many people in the city using forms of public transit there will be more people spending time walking, be it the short walk from the bus stop to their flat, or the jaunt from the tube stop to their work place, it is certainly much more convenient to not be planning your walk around your getting your caffeine fix.

Similarly, there is an abundance of small corner grocery stores dotted around the London cityscape (the most common of which being Tesco Express stores). I find myself reminded of one my dad's friends who had spent time living in Japan, who upon returning to Canada had tried to continue using his bike to get around as he had in Japan. What he found when he attempted to do so was that our Canadian cities are simply too sprawled-out. The city of London does not have the same luxury of spreading itself eternally the way our cities do in Canada.