In 2020, I got into urbanism unintentionally. A few things contributed to this, but the biggest factor was actually getting a Onewheel in the first months of the COVID lockdowns.
I wanted a toy to play with while everything was closed, and it looked as good as any. If you're not familiar, a Onewheel is a self-balancing skateboard-type device. It looks like this:
The device is pretty easy to learn to ride — 1 hour to do laps around the park, 1 day to ride around the neighborhood, and a total pro within a week or two. The biggest hurdle is your brain turning off its desire to manually balance, and let the computer balance for you.
The biggest advantage of the Onewheel versus an electric skateboard is the large central wheel handles bumps and cracks extremely well. The diameter is about 4x more than a skateboard wheel, and it's air-filled with some give.
The real magic comes with its portability. Compared to an electric scooter or bike, it's tiny. It has a handle on the side that you can just pick it up with. It stows easily beneath your seat on the bus, or in the bottom of a shopping cart. You can leave it charging by the front door and just walk out of the house and go ride.
So even though I got the Onewheel as a toy, I wound up actually mainly using it for running errands! It's about 1 mile from our house to the grocery store. About 5 minutes by Onewheel. Because it's hands-free, I would ride back with a bag of groceries in each hand.
This completely changed my relationship to cooking. I started visiting the grocery store three times a week to get the next day or two of food. If I realized I was missing an ingredient in the middle of meal prep, I could make a round-trip in under 15 minutes. It's actually faster than a car due to time spent parking — with the Onewheel I arrive at the front door.
The Onewheel also got me using transit a lot more. It's ideal for first and last mile — getting to the bus stop from home, and from the bus stop to the final destination. It's easy to take on the bus.
Once you start seeing the city through this lens, you can't unsee it. Some things you notice:
Once you start thinking about these things, it's not long before whatever algorithmic feeds you have start showing you content from pro-urbanist channels like Not Just Bikes. You start watching those and get really radicalized!
It's been over four years now since I started down the urbanism path and a few things have changed.
I actually got rid of the Onewheel, mainly for safety reasons, but also because I had some bad interactions with the company with a faulty footpad. Overall it's a fun but somewhat dangerous toy, but the company behind the product is really hostile to its users and to other companies who might compete with it (aggressive patent litigation in the "self balancing skateboard" space). I don't recommend the product.
What I realized was the absolute killer UX for the Onewheel was the complete lack of friction in using it. Grab and go. So I actually made a super lightweight road bike and mounted it on the wall right by our front door. Very similar effect! Now I just grab it and go.
When I was in the radicalized phase of a new convert, I did a bit of activism in the city to improve things, but this is really just fighting tooth and nail. I realized I don't really have the temperament to do this full time. I've mostly organized my life where the infrastructure is good enough to meet my needs and made my peace with it.
In the medium term, I'm interested in new town projects like Esmeralda. It honestly seems easier to build a new urbanist paradise than fight for decades to turn an existing city into one. And I'd rather be around like-minded people that are aligned on those values while building, even if it means giving up some things in the short term.