July 13, 2007

  Bob on Cities
    By Bob Francis, Owner
    soundRUNNER




As I do, you may pay attention to the annual updates of the Census Bureau’s estimates of the population of America’s urban cores. Decennial census counts are of great importance to the general population, as they drive issues from political representation to program support at all levels of government. The census is important to runners, too, as is the fate of America’s cities. Except for areas like Manhattan, downtown Boston, or downtown Chicago, which teem with runners, most urban cores in the industrial north are shrinking. Most of the great urban marathons, like Philadelphia, are routed to disguise the hard truth of urban decay, played out in cities as close as Bridgeport, New Haven, and Hartford.

I ran the Detroit Marathon in 2002, where it is not possible to plot a 26.2 mile course and evade the truth. The starting line was close to the Renaissance Center on the Detroit River, barely one-half mile from my town house. The Paris of the Midwest in the 1920s, the Arsenal of Democracy during WWII, and my father’s home from 1928–1932 is no more: the city with 2.1 million residents in 1960 has, by the latest Census Bureau estimates, shriveled to about 850,000 inhabitants, most living near or below the poverty line. That’s a loss of 73 people a day, every day, for forty-seven years! There are no specialty running stores along the marathon course. You’d be hard pressed to find a pair of Wave Riders for sale within the city limits. It’s hard enough to find a safe place to run; consequently there are precious few runners downtown in Detroit, fewer still in the neighborhoods.

The first two years in Detroit I ran anywhere I wanted, probably recklessly and stupidly. I ran on Belle Isle, Detroit’s threadbare answer to Central Park, in the dark. Eventually I stopped after realizing that in the dark, people couldn’t easily see that I had nothing of value for them to take. For a year I ran up Woodward Avenue, Detroit’s equivalent of Fifth Avenue, and down Cass Avenue, where you could run in the middle of the street even at rush hour. The Cass Corridor treats its residents to a short, nasty, brutish life, none of whom could muster the energy to chase some guy wearing nothing but shorts and a tank top. For the last two years I ran mainly on the east side, to the local high school with its track. I ran in the afternoon at first, until a group of kids threw something at me from close range. So I switched to my least favorite time to run, early in the morning, when I was less likely to encounter trouble.

That is the corrosive effect of looking for a safe place to run. You impose limitations on yourself which eventually limit the value of the experience. How different from running on the shoreline, where we take off at any time of day, in any direction, on road or trail, with few concerns other than the occasional belligerent driver! So I propose a prosperity index for any community you enter: count the number of runners on the streets.

Archive of Bob’s Lane

Issue 1: May 1, 2007: Bob on the Bash
Issue 2: May 10, 2007: Bob on Dave Parcells
Issue 3: May 24, 2007: Bob on the Branford Road Race
Issue 4: June 1, 2007: Bob on Being Green
Issue 5: June 15, 2007: Bob from the Left Coast
Issue 6: June 23, 2007: When Pain is Leisure
Issue 7: July 6, 2007: At Seventeen