I learned how to commute when I studied in Madrid after university. I was in my 20s and on my own for the first time, and I loved it.π I loved looking at maps and getting lost because it meant discovering a new place. I’d ride the bus to nowhere in particular, just people watching and taking in the sights of the city.
Twenty years later, I’m living in one of Turkey’s most well-connected cities. My daughter gets to ride the bus everyday.π She stands next to bus stops, observes neighborhood landmarks and streetlife, and picks fruits from sidewalk trees. She’s growing up with a more intimate knowledge of the streets than I did, and thinks of train rides as fun and exciting.
This sense of the streets–knowing how to find her way around, making friends with bus drivers and neighborhood people, asking for directions–I hope it lets her grow up with an awareness of and familiarity with life outside, that she exists in the context of a neighborhood and city.π‘ She has a place in all of it. She belongs, she enjoys it, and in turn, she has responsibilities to care for it.πΏ
π On Blue Day, let’s reconnect with our streets, our neighborhood and our city. This is the bigger body outside of us, and in the same way we explore, enjoy and nurture our own bodies, let’s explore, enjoy and nurture our streets.π£
