Semi-abandoned dream of mine was to go into urban planning or something related. So I have an interest in the built environment that goes back a few years.

Surprising and eye-opening occurrence in my life: I gave up my car closing in on three years ago. Me and my two adult sons do a lot of walking locally. Walking has caught on in my neighborhood, in spite of a lack of a side-walks and huge undeveloped tracts of land and other types of discouragements. With more people walking locally, the local air is cleaner and the plant life is healthier...etc...which seems to encourage more people to walk. The neighborhood also seems to have gotten safer, this based on certain subjective impressions but also on the fact that we no longer get police cars staking out the entrance to our apartment complex, which was a routine thing when we first lived here.

Anyway, how people behave is apparently less dependent upon the built environment than I thought and that behavior is important in building the fabric of community. People know each other more now and are friendlier and the streets are safer...etc. The neighborhood has changed a good bit in the time I have been here.