The street in front of our hotel is about 8.3m wide. (I actually measured it.) And this is generous for Palma's Old Town. The building directly in front of us is also 6 storeys tall and has exactly zero setbacks and stepbacks. It is one straight elevation all the way up. In other words, it is an urban condition that does not follow any of today's generally accepted rules of planning. The street should be wider. And the building should have a bunch of stepbacks, right? Maybe not. Lots of people seem to love this kind of dense, unplanned, and walkable built form in Europe. Eating outside on a narrow street is a feature. But for whatever reason, when people return home, many don't seem to want it anymore, or worse, they actively oppose it. It's an interesting dynamic that I don't fully understand. Because personally, I enjoy visiting places that I could see myself living in. What about you?

I just learned that the US has a "National Walk to Work Day." And it happens to be today, Friday, April 7, 2023. It was started in 2004 by the federal government and the American Podiatric Medical Association -- because, you know, walking is good for your feet -- and the idea is that since so few Americans actually walk to work, we should encourage them to do it at least one day of the year. Back in 2019, the figure was that less than 3% of Americans do it on average.

While I'm sure that there are some good intentions here, I'm guessing that the impact of this national day is probably somewhere between zero and "I guess I'll park in a farther spot at the office park today." The reality is that a day like this exists because we have spent the last 75 years, or even longer, making it exceedingly difficult to navigate our cities without a car. So it is equal to, "let me speak out of the other side of my mouth for a day."

But we also know that a real and meaningful solution is pretty simple to achieve (though clearly not easy). Build smaller streets and build more densely, especially next to transit. (Would you add anything to this?) So I think it's time for a new kind of national day. Maybe it's a day where every dense development proposal next to transit just gets automatically approved. It would be a national day for "this took too long, so here you go."

I don't know, this probably needs some work. I'm open to other ideas here.