Working to

make everyday life healthy,

by design.

Jarrett Walker describes the history and the reasons behind why we, in the US, have let transit survive – but never thrive – over the years and makes the case for why we should support it. From our perspective, looking at the environmental contexts that shape health, public transit is really important. The benefits include greater physical activity and less obesity, more social interaction, and access to groceries and needed health and social services for its riders, and less pollution for all.

Among the iconic phrases that best evoke the spirit of America - “Just Do It," “I’m Luvin’ It” - “Freedom of Choice” is surely up there.

In just three words, Freedom of Choice expresses the ideals of American liberty, where individuals are empowered to forge their own path. 

The idea dates back to the early years of the republic, when Alexis de Touqueville noted that American individualism was a new and powerful force that might rival the common good of democracy. But the phrase really took off in the consumer age, in the bountiful days after World War II.

The curse of the systems thinker is that one is always seeing patterns, always searching for the fundamental forces and dynamics that underlie a system and give rise to the peculiar results one sees. One is always – as we like to say in public health – looking upstream, for the root causes – and even their root causes. It’s hard to stay focused on the immediate problems at hand, when there are deeper, more fundamental causes of those problems that are – most perplexing to the systems thinker – so deeply embedded that they are rendered nearly invisible, or at least taken for granted. They are the givens, the fixed conditions that exist outside the solution space.