Dave HuggardMoving out from my first 1km radius around home, I discovered that it’s a different world out there! That inner kilometer was all about nice suburbia, a little too nice really. But at 1.5km, there was suddenly noise, excitement, even danger.
To the east, it’s 1.5 km to our one highway – maybe not Los Angeles or Toronto caliber, but still not a place you want to hang out for long. To the southeast, an enormous coal terminal and its railroad capillaries, and to the southwest, one of those complexes of large industrial buildings where they do I-don’t-know-what and the security guards certainly aren’t about to let you find out. And, biggest change of all, the point 1.5km south of home is in the ocean. (I did all these drawings from photos I took on my circular tour, so I didn’t have to practice sketching while treading water. Although now that I mention it, that would be a good challenge to tackle someday). To the north, more-suburban suburbia – we suburbanites have fine sensitivity to different degrees of suburbanity – as well as the first hint of the forests that occupy the next 2000km or so to the north.
The thing is, once I’d broken out of my Covid 1km-bubble, why stop? So I was quickly on to 2km. The ocean became more prominent, with two points well into the harbour, and one at a creek estuary – which was the first really new place (to me) that I “discovered” with this project. In the other direction, suburbia continues, as it is wont to do, but there was diversity: a little house completely devoured by a cedar, a lovely and quirky old house on a hill, townhouses with carports added to my “Do not be here in an earthquake” list, and a part of native reservation land that seemed almost rural (although “ruralness” can have a lot to do with poverty).
The Radius Project is helping me discover places I never knew about in my city, and to pay attention to parts I would have just passed by – or not passed by at all, because they are off my habitual routes. There is also pleasure in starting to see my neighbourhood in its larger context. And, of course, knowing that that context extends beyond 2km…