Returning to Drive for a moment, the Freakonomics blog over at the New York Times site has a fascinating look at walkable cities.
A couple of highlights:
“First, note that seven of the 10 most walkable cities sit on large bodies of water. With a coastline checking expansion, available land had to be used more intensively… Intensive land use means density, and density generally means walkability.” Nine of the ten least walkable and most car dependent cities on the list of 40 are inland, without geographic barriers to sprawl.
“Second, the walkable list is dominated by Northeastern and West Coast cities that are comparatively old, at least by American standards. Six of the 10 most walkable cities were among the 20 largest urban places in 1900… On the other hand, the least walkable cities are relative newcomers on the urban scene. Eight of 10 are in the South, the site of much of America’s most explosive urban growth in the postwar period.”
But as blogger Eric A. Morris points out even the walkable cities are surrounded by sprawl. His conclusion: “In short, with some admittedly notable exceptions (such as the interesting case of Portland), they just don’t seem to be building walkable cities any more. The tricky part is figuring out how, and whether, we can take steps to remedy this.”
I suggest you read the whole blog post — and if the subject interests you, read DRIVE.
Jocelyn Downie calls for the legalization of assisted suicide in this Ottawa Citizen piece. “My position is grounded in two core ethical values: autonomy and equality,” says the Canada Research Chair in health law and policy and professor of law and medicine at Dalhousie University.
So the good people at the Chapters and Indigo empire have decided to shelve That Good Night in the Self-Help: Death and Grieving section. Now as much as I hope the book will be helpful for people who read it, I wouldn’t call it a self-help book. In the lingo of the publishing industry, it’s a “big idea” book — a bit pretentious, perhaps, but more accurate nonetheless. Anyway, it’s always possible that the Indigoians know what they’re doing and as long as the book sells, I don’t really care what shelf it sits on.
That Good Night: Ethicists, Euthanasia and End-of-Life Care is now available at amazon.ca for $15.75 and chapters.indigo.ca for $16.50 (or $15.67 for iRewards members). It’s also starting to show up in old-fashioned bricks-and-mortar stores.
The launch party for That Good Night: Ethicists, Euthanasia and End-of-Life Care is on March 31 and I want to put together a playlist of songs about death. So I am looking for your suggestions. I’m willing to include some sad songs such as Lucinda Williams’s “Sweet Old World,” but since it is a party, I particularly want fun tunes — even cheesy good fun such as Blue Oyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper.” But, please, let’s skip “Candle in the Wind.”
R.I.P. photographer Tom Hanson. His shot of a bagpiper wearing a gas mask at the Quebec Summit protest is on the cover of my first book, Watchdogs and Gadflies: Activism from Marginal to Mainstream.
He died, at age 41, while playing hockey. Yikes.
Read the Globe and Mail obit here.
The Globe and Mail has a good piece on the case of André Dion, the Quebec man who has asked for assisted suicide. Turns out the province’s minister of health and social services is a doctor who “co-wrote a book entitled Mourir dans la dignité (Dying With Dignity), in which he argued the ‘door should be left open in some particular cases which could justify a positive response’ for assisted suicide.”
He is open to a debate on the issue but is now saying that changing the law is a federal responsibility. Like that ever stopped Quebec before.
Andre Dion, a terminally-ill Quebec City man, has asked the provincial health minister for the right to assisted suicide.
According to this cbc.ca story: “A spokesperson for the health ministry said, although the ministry is sympathetic to the cause, there’s really nothing it can do.” I guess that’s slightly better than “not my department.”
There’s something bubbling up here and I think we’ll see Quebec, as it does so often on social issues, lead the rest of the country on the assisted suicide debate.
Last night my aunt told me that while she’d given DRIVE to several friends, she didn’t think That Good Night would make a good gift. “Yes,” I said, “People might take it the wrong way.”
But later, I realized that while a book about dying may not make the best birthday present, it is something parents should give their adult children — and, then after the family has read it, they should all sit down and talk about how they want to go.
Assisted suicide becomes legal in Washington State on Thursday. How long before those of us in Canada have the same right?