| The importance of life at walking speed From my Zermatt report September, 2000 by Shunya Susuki |
| Once I asked the Deputy Mayor of the Zermatt village how he taught the
children in the village about environmental problems. He said, "I am teaching them from various angles by appealing to their sensibility. For example, I pointed out in one of my lectures recently that people are riding bicycles at a faster speed than before. I select different everyday subjects". |
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| Children playing with each other in the middle of the road |
| Before meeting him, I had thought that he would talk about earth-scale
environmental problems such as global warming or air pollution. Therefore, I felt confused over his talk on bicycle speed. Next morning, I realized that if we could resolve small environmental problems in our daily life one by one, they probably wouldn't develop into global environmental problems. Later, I told this story to Mr. Yamada, an environmental counselor who is living in Zermatt for 13 years. He said it meant "living a life at walking speed". |
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| An electric truck passing by children playing on the road (If in Japan, the children could be shouted at.) |
| Electric cars are permitted for business use only and people are not allowed to have their own car. Gasoline cars are prohibited. Because pedestrians always have the right of way in the Zermatt village, electric cars are running among them with reserve. Moving at walking speed is one of the standards for comfortable living environment. The living environment of the Zermatt village is kept by the speed regulation of electric cars. If electric cars start moving at a higher speed, traffic accidents can occur just the same as gasoline cars. From this point of view, the speed limit of Zermatt's traffic regulations, "less than 20 km an hour," is very important. At this speed it takes more than 18 seconds just to move 100 meters. For children it would be the best not to have cars running around the city, if possible. In fact, a very comfortable city without cars like Venice actually exists. However, not using cars isn't realistic in Japan, with a growing aging society. Therefore I recommend using small electric cars that move at a low speed like Zermatt village. This will allow children to play in peace in the streets, just like the children in Zermatt. |
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| Children playing after school on Barn Hoff street, the main street in Zerrmat |
| I was born in 1954. Few cars were running in my neighborhood in my childhood. I was able to play with neighboring children well on the road. I unconsciously learned the rule of playing in this community. However, nowadays most of the roads in Japan are occupied by a lot of cars. It is very difficult for children to play on roads. As a result, streets are no longer a place for Japanese children to play, but just a space to pass by. Territories for children to play are scattered in dots in Japan though it should originally stretch out in two dimensions like Zermatt. |
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| A moment that a mischievous group throwing stones is about to run away |
| If the number of cars is controlled and more importance is placed on keeping the walking speed, there would be more opportunities for elderly people to communicate with children playing in their neighborhood. |
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| An elderly talking to a child playing with a kick board |
| Street corner conversation is impossible if you are driving a car. In Japan, it is said that community awareness among the people is getting weaker. I think that one of the reasons is connected with people's increasing use of privately-owned cars. In old days, there were grocers, fishmongers, cheap candy shops and so on in my neighborhood, and everybody could go shopping on foot. However, as more and more people started using cars, new hypermarkets were established in the vicinity. Consequently, small neighboring shops could not help closing down themselves because they couldn't compete with the hypermarkets due to their small fund. When they disappeared, we had to go shopping in the distance by our own cars. This vicious circle promoted the use of cars, and the danger of traffic accidents increased at the same time. Also it weakens the community awareness of the people. Life at walking speed will reduce traffic accidents and bring opportunities for us to meet with each other. As a result, our community awareness will be restored. The revitalization of the community will prevent crime. I heard that there is no traffic accident and no crime in the Zermatt village. |