"Pyschogeography" by Will Self

from: Higgins, Karrie. "'Psychogeography' by Will Self: Disentangling the Modern Conundrum of Psyche and Place," Los Angeles Times, 4 November 2007.

Self begins "Psychogeography" with a long "introduction" describing a walk he took from London to New York. That such a thing is impossible is part of the point entirely: The idea is to walk from his London home to Heathrow Airport before flying to JFK, where he will set out again, on foot, for Manhattan. Here, Self sets up the strategy of his book by giving a nod to Debord while at the same time mapping out his own psychogeographic territory.

His long walks neither emulate nor resemble the dérives of the Situationists, in part because he carries his usual purposes and motivations -- promoting a book, say, or attending a meeting. He has no intention to "outfox prescribed folkways," but he also delights in exploring true "Empty Quarters," those zones that lie outside urban boundaries and off the paved paths. For him, these are the true frontiers, the last places left to discover and explore. . . .

A poet who walks and memorizes . . .

from: Kilen, Mike. "Bard's Dreams Channel Poetry," The Des Moines Register, 14 October 2007.

Joe Plum lives in the wooded hills of rural Monroe County in a home built from scraps without electricity or plumbing.

It's no environmental statement. Plum, 55, has never had indoor plumbing. A man asked him once if he lived "off the grid." Plum didn't know what that meant.

He wakes from dreams and walks into the woods, sometimes for hours, reciting and memorizing the poems that come to him in his sleep. . . .

Walking the World

from: Graham, Tom. "Walking the World," San Francisco Chronicle, 18 December 2005.

Street walking -- called the oldest profession -- has somehow been transformed into an extreme sport. Ask Haight-Ashbury's Larry Burgheimer, who has walked every street in San Francisco. Or Jeff Ingram, whose street walk was "75 percent complete" at last check. I'm halfway there myself. And the Castro's Dinah Sanders says she's perambulated 15 percent of the city's streets.

Since starting my quest in 2002 to walk every street in San Francisco, I've heard from others who have done their hometowns, too: People around the world, from Amsterdam to New Zealand, are walking every street on the map . . .

They're Talking the Walk

From: Groves, Martha. "They're talking the walk," Los Angeles Times, 13 January 2007:

Century City was envisioned in the 1960s as a bold experiment in urban planning — a sleek, efficient "second downtown" of high-rise office buildings where the car was king.

Now the district is the focus of a new urban experiment designed to undo the sort of auto-centric design that marked planning in Los Angeles for much of the last half-century. The vision — prompted by a looming boom in the construction of luxury condo towers — calls for a greener Century City that would be less about driving and more about walking.

Anticipating the arrival of potentially thousands of residents, a task force of property owners, developers and planners is dreaming of more open space, rows of stately trees and a pedestrian loop that would connect the new housing with the vastly expanded Westfield Century City shopping center, office towers and a growing number of restaurants and cultural amenities.

The effort, now in the most preliminary stage, would represent one of the most ambitious attempts to remake a section of Los Angeles into a place where people could get to shops, restaurants and even offices on foot. . . .

Factories are Essential

from: "Seeing Factories as Essential Parts: The shape of modern American cities may be changing as urban planners weigh the conflicting merits of housing versus industry." By Maria L. La Ganga and Roger Vincent, Los Angeles Times, 13 March 2006

OAKLAND — One after another, they stepped to the lectern, pleading. Don't take the land, they told City Council members. Don't put houses on it. If we lose it, it's gone forever.

This wasn't a scene from some Central Valley agricultural town, with fecund acres being gobbled up at a rapid pace. This was a bustling urban enclave in late January, and the appeals came from anxious residents and business owners demanding that city officials protect factories, not farms.

"Many businesses, even small businesses like mine on a half an acre, give you 40 good jobs," Bob Tuck, owner of Atlas Heating and Air Conditioning Co., insisted at the packed hearing on Oakland's land-use policies. "If you pave over our business land, it's never going to give you another economic crop. Let's make sure that it doesn't become a residential zone."

Large tracts of land are increasingly hard to find in California's crowded cities. Freeways are more congested than ever. Elected officials and environmentalists are clamoring for developers to build new houses within existing urban boundaries instead of fostering more traffic and sprawl.

At the same time, California lost nearly 340,000 manufacturing jobs in the last five years, making some industrial zones look like remnants of a more vibrant age.

So what's a canny developer to do?

. . . .

PARK(ing)

PARK(ing)
A temporary urban park

One of the more critical issues facing outdoor urban human habitat is the increasing paucity of space for humans to rest, relax, or just do nothing.

For example, more than 70% of San Francisco's downtown outdoor space is dedicated to the private vehicle, while only a fraction of that space is allocated to the public realm.

Feeding the meter of a parking space enables one to rent precious downtown real estate, typically on a 1/2 hour to 2 hour basis. What is the range of possible occupancy activities for this short-term lease? (. . . .)

Yikes, another defense of sprawl . . .

from: Kotkin, Joel. "Hands off my yard, Mr. Mayor!" Los Angeles Times, 13 December 2005. By Joel

IN A SERIES OF speeches around town, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has recently begun to flesh out a utopian vision for Los Angeles that gives new meaning to the idea that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

The way he sees it, Los Angeles shouldn't be Los Angeles at all but should be reshaped into something that mimics the lifestyles of the great cities of the East Coast and of Europe — dense, transit-dependent cities of high-rise apartment buildings like New York, Chicago, Boston and Paris.

"This old concept that all of us are going to live in a three-bedroom home, you know, this 2,500 square feet, with a big front yard and a big backyard — well, that's an old concept," the mayor suggested in a speech last week.

Instead, he said, Angelenos need to move away from that and look at the "good life" lived in traditional, densely packed, apartment-dominated cities.

But is that necessarily a good idea? Is that what Angelenos want? To be sure, some measure of market-driven densification is probably inevitable. But what sets L.A. apart from other great cities — and what makes it so attractive — has traditionally been exactly the opposite: its pattern of dispersion and its strong attachment to the single-family home. Assault that basic form and you will turn L.A. not into Paris but something more like an unruly, congested, dense Third World city. A Tehran, if you will, or a Mexico City. . . .

Sprawl isn't bad, that's just the way we roll . . .

Another positive interpretation of sprawl from Bruegmann. I'm still not buying it, though. Just because there is a long history of folks wanting to get out of cities doesn't mean that car-addictive suburbs were (are) the right solution.

from: Timberg, Scott. "Sprawling into controversy: Professor and author Robert Bruegmann is defying conventional wisdom with his claim that suburban creep is both an ancient phenomenon and a beneficial one." Los Angeles Times, 9 December 2005.

Professor and author Robert Bruegmann is defying conventional wisdom with his claim that suburban creep is both an ancient phenomenon and a beneficial one. At first glance, Robert Bruegmann — a childless academic whose modernist apartment building sits in a dense, upscale Chicago neighborhood — seems like the kind of guy who'd hate the suburbs. His peers and predecessors have, for decades, decried the unplanned, low-density, auto-dependent growth of shopping malls and subdivisions.

But he's emerging as the unlikely champion of what we've called, at least since the 1950s, "sprawl." His counterintuitive new book, "Sprawl: A Compact History," charts the spreading of cities as far back as 1st century Rome — and finds the process not just deeply natural but often beneficial for people, societies and even cities.

The Boston Globe has called Bruegmann "the Jane Jacobs of suburbia," after the urban historian who celebrated the serendipitous, high-density warren of Greenwich Village and other old neighborhoods.

"Sprawl has been as evident in Europe as in America," he writes, "and can now be said to be the preferred settlement pattern everywhere in the world where there is a certain measure of affluence and where citizens have some choice in how they live."

Debates over sprawl and urbanism tend to be very emotional and morally tinged to the point of moralism. Another new book, Joel S. Hirschhorn's "Sprawl Kills: How Blandburbs Steal Your Time, Health and Money," blames sprawl not only for social isolation but also for traffic accidents and untimely death caused by sedentary lifestyles. On the other side of the aisle, libertarians often excoriate sprawl's opponents as uptight liberal "elitists."

Mazda Recommends Employees Walk to Office

The following came through one of the other lists. Funny coming from a car company. We have a similar "rideshare" program here at CSULB, where you earn points every time you use alternative transportation (bus, carpool, bike, walk), points that can be redeemed for gift cards at various retail stores (like Lowe's Home Improvement). Only recently did the State of California deem this incentive a form of earned income and made it taxable. I haven't seen the damage yet, so I don't know how less appealing they've now made ridesharing. Doesn't matter to me much anyway, since I'll walk to work regardless.

from: Mazda Recommends Employees Walk to Office
Fri Dec 2, 2005, 10:04 AM ET, Associated Press via Yahoo News

Japanese automaker Mazda Motor Corp. is recommending its employees walk to the office, rather than commute by car, as part of an effort to improve their health and protect the environment, a company spokesman said Friday.

Those meeting a set of requirements by going to the office on foot are eligible to receive 1,500 yen ($12) a month, Mazda spokesman Ken Haruki said.

Aimed at improving employees' health and to promote environment protection, Mazda introduced its "Eco-walk commutation allowance" on Thursday, Hakuki said.

Mazda, Japan's fourth-largest automaker based in Hiroshima, is the first Japanese car company to encourage its employees to walk and offer a monetary incentive, he said.

Los Angeles is not sprawl after all . . .

You have to wonder if this guy has ever actually been to Los Angeles? While it may be true that the L.A. metropolitan area is dense, it certainly is NOT compact. An interesting point of view, however, and one which tries to look at So Cal more critically.

from: Bruegmann, Robert. "L.A., the king of sprawl? Not at all," Los Angeles Times, 23 October 2005.

Robert Bruegmann, professor of architecture, art history and urban planning at the University of Illinois at Chicago and chair of the art history department, is the author of "Sprawl: A Compact History"

ON THE FIRST page of his widely read 1958 essay "Urban Sprawl," William H. Whyte Jr. described the view out the window of a plane flying from Los Angeles to San Bernardino as "an unnerving lesson in man's infinite ability to mess up his environment."

Whyte was a young editor at Fortune magazine, already famous for his groundbreaking 1956 study of suburbia, "The Organization Man." But in describing L.A., he was merely rehashing an old argument. For many academics and intellectuals living in apartment buildings in Boston and New York, L.A. represented everything that was wrong with cities. They complained that it was unplanned and incoherent, too dispersed and automobile dependent; it lacked a definite form or true center.

In short, it was devoid of what they considered real urbanity. It was sprawl. For more than 50 years (until just recently, when it has had to share the honors with Atlanta), Los Angeles has had the distinction of being the poster child for sprawl, a settlement pattern reputed to be economically inefficient, environmentally degrading, socially inequitable and aesthetically ugly.

But, in fact, Los Angeles is not a particularly good example of urban sprawl. Take the part about being unplanned. The truth is that New York, Chicago and most of the older American cities had their greatest growth before there was anything resembling real public planning; the most basic American land planning tool, zoning, did not come into widespread use until the 1920s.

L.A., by contrast, was one of the country's zoning pioneers. It has had most of its growth since the 1920s, during a period when planning was already important, and particularly since World War II, when California cities have been subject to more planning than cities virtually anywhere else in the country.

Then there is the part about how the city is too dispersed. Although it is true that the Los Angeles region in its early years had widely scattered settlements, these settlements were not particularly low in density. Since World War II, moreover, the density of the Los Angeles region has climbed dramatically, while that of older cities in the North and East has plummeted. The result is that today the Los Angeles urbanized area, as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau, has just over 7,000 people per square mile — by a fair margin the densest in the United States . . . .

These trains should run under water

from: MacAdams, Lewis. "These trains should run under water," Los Angeles Times, 2 October 2005.

Don't expect to be fishing off the 1st Street bridge in downtown Los Angeles any time soon. But don't throw away your fly rod either, because last month the city finally moved closer to revitalizing its real and symbolic core: its river.

Almost two years ago, the city engineer's office presented a conceptual study on how a seasonal waterway in the channel through downtown, created by computer-operated inflatable dams, could create "El Pueblo Lake." Now Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the City Council's River Committee have announced that a team headed by a Pasadena engineering firm will draw up plans for making 32 miles of the Los Angeles River a more beautiful and interesting part of the city. Tetra Tech and its partners have 18 months also to come up with at least five major park projects between Tujunga Wash and Vernon's city limits.

The projects will be financed by public money, including Proposition O, the $500-million storm water cleanup measure that passed last November.

Before Angelenos and tourists spread picnic blankets across verdant riverside terraces, swim or fly-fish for trout in natural-looking pools, or gallop on a horse along tree-lined trails, engineers will have to satisfy city officials' challenges to restore wetlands, hold back floodwaters and improve water quality. But the most formidable barrier is the railroad tracks that line the entire 4 1/2 miles of the river between the Arroyo Seco and the city limits, isolating the central city from its river. . . .

Gussy up that trash-strewn concrete cesspool

from: Enquist, Philip and Craig Webb. "Gussy up that trash-strewn concrete cesspool," Los Angeles Times, 2 October 2005.

FOR THE SHEER POSSIBILITIES of renewing dead-ended neighborhoods, opening fenced-off Mars-scapes and providing immense environmental, cultural and recreational benefits, few projects in the world match the potential of an ecology-minded and people-centric revitalization of the Los Angeles River.

Consider those "once-in-a-century" urban waterside projects that have defined the character and fabric of so many of the world's great cities. Daniel Burnham's Downtown Chicago Plan, which celebrates its centenial in 2008, transformed Chicago's lakeshore into one of America's most architecturally beloved and recreationally rich downtown districts.

In a similar way, the 1910 City Beautiful Plan helped Orlando, Fla., retain its downtown lakeside heart, and it gave the city an ongoing unity of architectural purpose. More recently, Tempe's Town Lake development in Arizona, Chattanooga's Riverfront District in Tennessee, San Antonio's River Walk in Texas, Hartford's Adriaen's Landing in Connecticut, Shanghai's Huangpu River redevelopment and similar plans have helped open decaying waterfronts to enlivening and civically healing uses, including the reconnection of fractured streets and isolated neighborhoods.

Truth in advertising: Our firms took part in a 2005 request for proposals to transform 32 miles of the L.A. River into what would be a multipurpose linear greenway running virtually the entire length of the city. Our proposal wasn't chosen. We were, however, so taken by the project's potential to serve as a grand civic unifier that we want to add our voices to those arguing that, with a balance of advanced engineering and imaginative planning, the L.A. River can be of comparable civic worth to, say, New York's Central Park, Chicago's Grant Park or Washington's Rock Creek Park. . . .

Eden's Need for Green

from: Waldie, D.J. "Eden's need for green," Los Angeles Times, 2 October 2005.

AUTHOR LAWRENCE Clark Powell remembered his mother arriving in Pasadena at the turn of the last century with her horticultural triumph: a geranium. It was a hard-to-keep exotic back East, a tender plant for middle-class women to hover over in the parlor. She kept her geranium on her lap on the long, transcontinental train trip, Powell recalled. And when she stepped off the platform in wintertime Los Angeles, she saw geraniums in bloom in every vacant house lot. They were as common as weeds. In humiliation (and perhaps with some relief), she threw away her pampered plant.

You might say that we've been tossing out the geraniums ever since. In its abundance, Los Angeles is a kind of garden, after all. Why would anyone need or care for more?

This is the paradox of nature in this city and among the reasons that lush L.A. also is park poor. . . .

"Jaywalkers" in Chicago . . .

Good news, sorta. Chicago mayor backs off plan to ticket pedestrians, but spins it as an issue of pedestrian safety rather than the original emphasis on drivers' rights and efficient traffic movement. Hmm. While I certainly don't advocate jaywalking, I side with pedestrian rights advocates on this since the crackdown seemed a thinly veiled attack on pedestrians in general and a concession to drivers who already own the road. Hope this gives more momentum to steering the discussion, pun intended, to making cities more sustainable, which means car-free or at least car-lite.

from: Spielman, Fran. "Jaywalkers safe as mayor backs off ticket plan," Chicago Sun-Times, 28 September 2005

After nearly a week of ridicule, Mayor Daley on Tuesday put the brakes on a controversial plan to ticket pedestrians who tie up downtown traffic by jaywalking and racing across streets after the light has changed.

Daley tried his best to be delicate about it. He didn't want to saw off the limb with Andrew Velasquez, the mayoral aide who oversees the Traffic Management Authority, still sitting on it. But, the mayor left little doubt that the plan to bring the hammer down on pedestrians would never see the light of day.

"I don't know about ticketing them. But, it's a safety issue. When someone . . . tries to run across, like Lake Shore Drive, and they get killed, don't blame the city and don't blame the driver,'' Daley said. "Jaywalking is very dangerous. A lot of people get seriously injured or killed. . . .

Pedestrian Critical Mass in Chicago

After Allesandra Gillen alerted pedestrianculture to this article, Ben Helphand of Logan Square Walks sent the following press release:

For Immediate Release:

Walking is Not a Crime!
Pedestrians Put Foot Down to Protect Downtown Walkers

· What: Pedestrian Rally and March
· When: Wednesday, September 28, 2005, 5pm.
· Where: Daley Plaza.
· Who: Hundreds asserting their right to walk will rally and lead a march.
· Contact: 773-252-4657 or 773-562-9942 (cell).


Foot traffic has long been a cornerstone of downtown Chicago. Imagine Michigan Avenue sidewalks without holiday shoppers. Imagine Buckingham Fountain, the museum campus, the lakefront, or Millennium Park without scores of pedestrians enjoying the view. And imagine the increased congestion of more drivers on Chicago's streets. Imagine no longer.

If Andrew Velasquez, executive director of the city's Office of Emergency Management and Communications, has his druthers, walking won't be an enjoyable pastime for Chicago residents and visitors, but a criminalized activity, warranting fines and the watchful eye of the police.

In the September 22 Chicago Sun-Times, Velasquez identifies pedestrian traffic as a central cause of vehicle traffic congestion. He asserts the scales are "tipped too heavily in favor of pedestrians" and intends to confront the problem by "drafting legislation that would empower the city's 303 traffic control aides to ticket pedestrians, either for crossing the street outside the crosswalk or within the crosswalk but against the light."

"Pedestrians are being scapegoated for traffic jams caused simply by too many people driving," said Michael Burton of Break the Gridlock. "The bigger threat to Chicagoans are reckless drivers, not walkers. Resources would be much better spent enforcing car speed limits. Encouraging more people to bike, ride transit and walk is the solution, NOT the problem."

"I'm certainly not opposed to holding reckless pedestrians in check," says Ben Helphand, co-Chair of Logan Square Walks. "However, the notion that scales lean in favor of pedestrians simply doesn't hold up. On average 13% of traffic deaths each year in Illinois are pedestrians. Yet only 1 percent of federal surface transportation funds spent in Illinois are spent on pedestrian and bicycle facilities and safety. The Office of Emergency Management and Communications would have us believe that drivers are second-class citizens in Chicago. The reality is quite the opposite."

The crackdown on pedestrians, combined with the City of Chicago Traffic Management Authority's closure of the Queen's Landing crosswalk, which provided pedestrian access from Buckingham Fountain to the lakefront, has pedestrians "seeing red." Hundreds will gather in Daley Plaza at 5pm on Wednesday, September 28. A short program will begin at 5:15pm, featuring pedestrian advocates, urban planners and perhaps even the Queen of England herself! At 5:30pm they'll strike out on a stroll around the loop. All those who enjoy the city of Chicago on foot are invited to join the critical mass.

The Downtown Pedestrian Rally and Critical Mass is being coordinated by Logan Square Walks and Break the Gridlock. More information at http://www.logansquarewalks.org/ or 773-252-4657 or 773-562-9942 (cell).

New Urbanism in Colorado

from: Building a dream: Brother, sister plan anti-suburb in Colorado

(CNN) -- Imagine being able to live, work and play in a place where everything is within walking distance.

The brother and sister duo of Jed and Katie Selby are hoping that recreating homes that are surrounded by parks, commerce and beauty will lure people from the suburban sprawl and the comfort of their cars. South Main is where they hope to do it.

South Main is a city concept created by the Selbys. Its on the edge of Buena Vista, Colorado, and will be a mixed-use development of homes and business space for all walks of life. . . .

"[South Main] is built on the principles of new urbanism, which are nothing new," Jed said. "It's essentially built around basic human needs, including places to work, places to shop, places to gather. The difference is that they're all within walking distance."

the death of cars in New Orleans . . .

. . . so, why not keep it that way? According to this guy, however, "normal" means lots of cars being able to go wherever they need to go.

from: Vartabedian, Ralph. "At an impasse inside disaster," Los Angeles Times, 21 September 2005.

NEW ORLEANS — If you have a tendency to drive the wrong way on one-way streets, park in the middle of the road or blow through intersections controlled by signals, then you might fit into the disorder and chaos of New Orleans in recent weeks.

The emergency workers and remaining residents here have faced countless challenges to their health and safety in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Dealing with a dysfunctional highway system is a relatively minor issue. But anybody used to the systematic order of an American city's road network is left dumbstruck driving through this historic city in the weeks after the Aug. 29 hurricane and the flood that followed.

One hint of trouble might have been the dead alligator I saw on the interstate while approaching the city two weeks after the storm. Only a few miles from downtown, the interstate abruptly and without warning plunged into the murky brown floodwaters of Katrina. Despite the back and forth of residents, first returning and now fleeing Hurricane Rita, traffic remains relatively light. Streets empty for a 6 p.m. curfew each evening. Streetlights are out, and a drive down historic St. Charles Avenue at night is an eerie excursion into the desolation of a remarkably beautiful neighborhood. There are no pedestrians. No lights. No cars. . . .

Think it's bad here? Try walking in Moscow . . .

from: Murphy, Kim. "On Moscow's Mean Streets, Every Automobile Is a Dodge," Los Angeles Times, 21 September 2005.

MOSCOW--On the streets of Russia's capital, it is the loser who ventures out without a weapon. Once the armament of choice was a small Lada. These days, it's likely to be a 3-ton Mercedes. Yet the dynamics of battle remain the same: The front bumper trumps the pedestrian, who is sent somersaulting over the hood almost every time.

So frequently do automobiles and pedestrians come into contact that a body at the side of the road covered with an overcoat barely draws a crowd. Elderly women, faced with a green crossing light, break into clumsy sprints with the help of their canes; students gather in packs like nervous gazelles before dashing across crosswalks in carefully timed streaks.

Last year, 34,506 people were killed and a quarter of a million injured in road accidents in Russia — nearly double the rate in the U.S. In Moscow alone, more than 14 cars a day hit pedestrians; 300 have died this year. . . .

Rhetorics of Place

Here is an issue of Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture dedicated to place. I've only been able to skim a few articles, but so far so good!

Reconstruction 5.3 (Spring 2005): Rhetorics of PlaceGuest Editors: Michael Benton, Melissa Purdue, and G. Wesley Houp

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editorial
Michael Benton, "Rhetorics of Place: The Importance of Public Spaces and Public Spheres"

Articles
Joy Ackerman, "A Politics of Place: Reading the Signs at Walden Pond"
David Burley, Pam Jenkins, Joanne Darlington, Brian Azcona, "Loss, Attachment, and Place: A Case Study of Grand Isle, Louisiana"
Patrick Howard, "Nurturing Sense of Place Through the Literature of the Bioregion"
Bruce Janz, "Whistler’s Fog and the Aesthetics of Place"
Joy Kennedy, "The Edge of the World"
Michael Kula, "What Have Bagels Got to Do With Midwesternness?"
John Shelton Lawrence and Marty S. Knepper, "Discovering Your Cinematic Cultural Identity"
Harry Olufunwa, "The Place of Race: Ethnicity, Location and 'Progress' in the Fiction of Chinua Achebe and Ralph Ellison"
Anthony M. Orum, "All the World's A Coffee Shop: Reflections on Place, Community and Identity"
Lynda H. Schneekloth and Robert. G. Shibley, "Placemaking: A Democratic Project"

Review Essays
Danny Mayer on Ethan Watter's Urban Tribes: A Generation Redefines Friendship, Family and Commitment
Matthew Ortoleva on McComiskey and Ryan's City Comp: Identities, Spaces, Practices
Rania Masri on Joel Weishaus' Forest Park: A Journal
Christine Cusick on Joel Weishaus' Forest Park: A Journal
Matthew Wolf-Meyer on Cadava and Levy's Cities Without Citizens

Reviews
Marilyn Yaquinto on Peter Bondanella's Hollywood Italians: Dagos, Palookas, Romeos, Wise Guys, and Sopranos

Bikers, walkers driven to unseat motorists

from: Alvarez, Fred. "Bikers, Walkers Driven to Unseat Motorists," Los Angeles Times, 16 September 2005.

The parking lot at the Ventura fairgrounds was virtually empty Thursday for the start of California's major conference to promote bicycling and walking. But that's exactly what event organizers expected.

Scores of participants hiked, pedaled and skateboarded to Walk and Roll California 2005, a two-day strategy session aimed at getting people out of their cars and on their feet or bicycle seats.

"We practice what we preach," said conference organizer Gail Payne, a Berkeley-based transportation planner who specializes in cycling and pedestrian issues. "Our mission is to make sure bicycling and walking are safer and more accessible throughout California."

In a land where the car is king, that is no easy task. But conference organizers say their efforts have been aided lately by skyrocketing gas prices and an emerging battle against obesity, issues that have made cycling and walking more attractive to the public.Still, those gathered Thursday at the oceanfront fairgrounds say they have plenty of speed bumps to maneuver. . . .