Where is Everybody?
Long Walk: 11/02/2024
Walk Summary
Date: 11/03/2024
Distance: 19.71 Miles
Time
Moving: 6hrs 40 min
Stopped: 0hr 57 min
Food
Breakfast: Ozark Mountain Biscuit Truck (at farmers market)
Lunch: Belly Market & Rotisserie.
Weather: Upper 60s. Sunny with clouds gathering in the evening
Major Biomes: Suburbia
Media
Podcasts: The Ezra Klein Show "The Hidden Politics of Disorder"
Search Engine "How do you sit quietly in the middle of a storm?"
Songs: Flogging Molly: "Within a mile of home"
We begin at the Columbia Farmers Market. Apperently it is one of the top farmer's markets in the country, and the place is packed with people purchasing high quality vegetables all from a 50 mile radius of Columbia.
I am purchasing a Sausage, Egg and Cheese biscuit, at the Ozark Mountain Biscuit CO, Biscuit truck. Or trying to, there is a line. Apperently, I am not the only person who goes to the farmer's market to get something with as few vegetables in it as possible.
I get my sandwhich and set off. Two blocks east to Again street park, where I eat it on a bench. I'm trying something new on this walk, I am going to record all the people I see.
This week, I've been trying to write something on how outside is empty. Next to the tab where I am writing this, I have another tab, this one is called, 'no one is outside.' In that tab, I wrote about how some places are busy and some are not, and there are wide stretches of emptiness in the city. But it wasn't quite coming together. Part of the problem was I didn't have any data, and me saying, “some parts of the city are full of people outside, and some are very empty, just isn’t very interesting.”
So today I will gather some data. While on my regular long walk for the week, I will record everybody outside. Everyone who passes me on a bike, everyone who is walking on the other side of the street, the guy mowing his lawn. I will record their location, and what they are doing, but no details about them personally. I’ll use emojis, obviously.
This is not a neutral excercise. I've done a lot of these walks, and I've noticed that most places are very empty. I often walk for many minutes without seeing anyone. So I'm hoping this data will show to the great extent people aren't outside, or are only outside in limited locations.
It really does. You'll want to see this.
I think this data is interesting and worth taking seriously. Like all data worth taking seriously it is important to note its limitations.
TIME: I present this as I'm moving through space, but it is important to remember I am also moving through time. I start at about 10am, and finish about 6pm. When I discuss somewhere as busy or empty, or that only certain kinds of activities are happening there, I can speak only for the moment I happen to walk by. I think that the spatial dimension is more important, but the time one matters as well, particularly as things quiet down near the end of the day.
DEMOGRAPHY: I am not mapping any kind of demographic characteristics, age, race, sex, etc. these characteristics are not represented by the emoji. Most of the people I passed were White, though they varied in most other demographic respects. I also make no effort to count the number of people, a single Emoji may refer to a group of people walking together for example.
N = 1. This is a single walk, on a single day, in a single small midwestern college town.
I am not Chris Arnade. I am not looking to talk to anyone. When I walk I'm not trying to interact with anyone beyond a friendly nod, or small wave.
I want to document three things:
1. How many people are outside
2. Where are they outside.
3. What are they doing.
In short. Where is everybody?
The Plan
On the bench in Again street park, where the walk can begin in earnest. I've consumed my sandwhich, but I don't have a route figured out. For several weeks I have been meaning to walk the suburbs south of Nifong because I have never really been there. I plan to take the MKT trail out that direction, and then try to work my way back. expect the walk to be about 20 miles and take essentially the whole day.
Again Street Park to MKT
This first section1 takes me south through some of Columbia's old, close in neighborhoods. This is an area of older homes, mostly pretty nice. A lot of Harris/Walz and Yes on 3 Signs. This is the kind of place where the real estate brochures might emphasize that it is a walkable neighborhood. While there were people outside it wasn't exactly thronged. I would pass someone every 2 or 3 blocks or so. As I neared the MKT traffic picked up a little bit.
Mostly people were walking, with a few dog walks (the dog emoji means dog with person, usually the person is walking the dog, but sometimes they are playing in a backyard or something). I passed someone painting his fence, and decided that the painter/artist emoji would mean someone engaged in any kind of yardwork, working on their car, or home maintenance.
MKT (Lakeshore Drive) to MKT (Forum Boulevard).
Then I got on the MKT and foot traffic (by which I mean all non-car traffic, even including cyclists) shot up. It was a beautiful fall day, perfect walking conditions and everyone had decided to go be outside on the MKT. Things were especially busy near the MLK parking lot, and near the wetlands, but it was pretty constant throughout. There were also a lot more active people, cyclists and runners who looked serious about it.
MKT (Forum Boulevard) to Lunch (Belly).
By now it was lunchtime, so in search of sustenance I left the MKT and headed south along Forum, where after climbing the stupid part of Forum Boulevard without sidewalks (I guess the city is going to do something about this?), and taking this "walking in America" picture2. I walked along the straight, frankly uninteresting sidewalks of Forum Boulevard.
I met Miriam for lunch at the only lunch spot that seemed to be in the vicinity. Belly Market, a lightly fancy sandwhich and chicken place. I hadn't been there before but it turned out to be pretty good, and I would recommend it if you happen to be walking in the area, and don't mind spending $15 on a sandwhich. This recommendation might not be very valuable to the friendly people at Belly, as no one was walking in the area. I had passed only three people in the about half an hour since I'd left the MKT. The abrupt change from the busy MKT to the very empty Forum Boulevard is very striking.
Nifong Boulevard to South Sinclair Road
South of Nifong, is largely new territory for me. I’d walked there maybe just once or twice, and I'd never walked through many of the suburbs. While I was on an agreeable sidewalk, things were starting to feel a little bit emptier.
At this point it is worth explicitly mentioning the scale of this map. The icons are actually pretty big, and it makes it appear a little more populated that it feels. The first part of this, from Nifong to where I do the loop is a bit over a mile. Here I come across three people, one runner, one cyclists, and one dog walker. This means a person every twenty minutes or so. This is a long time to go without seeing anyone.
It wasn't like it wasn't nice. Tidy, sunny, green, and prosperous. It really was a lovely day for a walk.
In this section I also saw my first Trump yard signs, since setting off.3 One interesting thing about walking right before a big election is that you can see some of the political sorting firsthand. I had started in deep blue central Columbia, but that was clearly no longer the case. Red and blue America sometimes get talked about as if they are separate places but of course they are walking distance from each other4.
The second half of this section had a few more people, but they weren't going far from their homes. A number of people doing various sorts of yardwork, and some children playing on wheeled contrivances.
South Sinclair Road to Route KK
Suburbia can be difficult to navigate. I needed to stop heading south and checking google maps satellite view I saw this.
It was a potential way to head west without walking along Nifong, which I wasn't keen to do. The thing was I didn't really know what to make of this. The satellite imagery showed some newly built streets, and some places where there clearly were going to be roads but potentially no one had gotten around to building them yet.
I headed that direction and discovered to my great joy that they had indeed built the streets. Some of the homes had been built as well, and some had people living in them. others had been built and were for sale, many lots were empty with just the green tubes, others had started to be built with only the concrete in place.
Father on I passed through a section that was just a brand new, empty road through an empty field. The whole thing was strange, but also kind of wonderful. This was a newer than new neighborhood, and neighborhood right in the weeks before it became an actual neighborhood. I might have been the first person to walk on the sidewalk, who wase’t involved in building or selling it.
Not surprisingly there weren't many people here. I've recorded 3 dogs, but I think several of these were being played with in newly built backyards. It wasn't the emptiest section of the walk, but the strange half built landscape made it feel the emptiest.
Route KK and back to Scott Boulevard.
Passed Scott Boulevard and onto Thornbrook. Another suburban area with large homes, and big lawns. There were actually a fair few people outside, the most I'd seen since leaving the MKT. Many of them were doing some sort of yard work (taking care of a large home and lawn takes time I guess). But there were a smattering of dog walkers as well. It is also the only place on the whole walk I saw neighbors chatting with each other.
Sawgrass and Scott to MKT
This section is a long, perfectly straight sidewalk up a hill. It isn't that nice, it isn't that interesting. No one was here.
MKT Scott to MKT Lloyd
Back on the MKT towards home, and it is busy again. Even before I get to the path the Park is busy with the basketball court and the playground being well enjoyed. The trail itself is busy with users, again a lot of cyclists and runners.
MKT Lloyd to Stadium(Via County House Trail)
By now it was getting dim, and while I passed a few people on Lloyd Drive, they were mostly engaged in domestic extensions, drinking beer in a chair on the front lawn, raking leaves, and one cyclist.
Beyond this I joined the County House trail, an underused trail, and saw no one. Even though Columbia has a pretty extensive trial system, the MKT gets massively more traffic then the rest of them.
And home in the dusk, with seasonal leaves.
Data Summary
How many people are outside?
I walked for 6.67 hours and saw 124 people. That is an average of a person every 3 minutes or so. Which seems pretty busy. However 73 of these people are on two short sections of the MKT. If I spent maybe an hour and 2/3s on the MKT, that would mean for the other five hours I passed someone about every 6 minutes or so.
Honestly this is more people than I thought and more than it feels like. Partially it is because I recorded everyone outside, not just people actually on the sidewalk. Someone playing with their dog in the backyard, doesn't provide much of a sense of company or street life. Much of the world certainly feels very empty, and walking for 20 minutes without seeing anyone you really do start to notice their absence.
What are people doing outside?
An even mix of activites overall. Walking is the largest, but cycling is a pretty close second.
Where is Everybody?
Most people were on the MKT. However this varies by activity. This is especially true for runners, 90% of whom were on these sections and cyclists 77% of whom were on these sections. In some suburban residential areas people who were outside were outside in their yards, either working on a project or playing with their dogs.
TLDR
People are outside, but they tend to be concentrated in certain places (on the MKT). Outside activites vary by location, with runners and cyclists particularly on the trail. In certain residential neighborhoods most people are either doing some kind of home or yard work, or playing with dogs. Neighborhoods still feel empty, especially when they haven’t finished building them yet.
It was a lovely day for a walk.
-Chris
Related:
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A Long Walk
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It was a six hour walk and i've broken it into nine sections, so each one is very roughly 45 minutes.
A “walking in America” picture usually consists of an big road, an empty straight sidewalk, and an American Flag.
I sort of regret not doing a walk where I kept track of all the yard signs. Less to see partisan divides and more to see political vs. apolitical neighborhoods.
I’ve not noticed many places with a lot of mixed yard signs. Neighborhoods either seem to be blue, red, or (and this is very common) sans signs entirely.