Living Streets Aotearoa

Videos – New Zealand Walking Summit 2021

31/07/2021

The third New Zealand Walking Summit held on 24 - 25 June 2021 focused on some of the key issues for 2021 and beyond, including the Climate Change Commissions wero (challenge) to increase walk mode share by 25% by 2030, and the big shake up happening in our planning laws which we expect will lead to more pedestrian-centric development. Check out the videos of our stimulating two day conference.

The New Statesman

How the bicycle set women free

14/07/2021

Lola Seaton

In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), Elizabeth resolves to walk three miles across muddy fields to Netherfield, the rented estate of the wealthy bachelor Mr Bingley, where her sister Jane has come down with a cold and is too unwell to return home. When she arrives “with weary ankles, dirty stockings, and a face glowing with the warmth of exercise”, her appearance arouses “a great deal of surprise”. That she should have walked “in such dirty weather, and by herself, was almost incredible” to Mr Bingley’s haughty, malicious sisters. As soon as Elizabeth is out of earshot, the sisters begin “abusing her”: “She really looked almost wild.” “Her hair, so untidy, so blowsy!” “To walk three miles, or four miles, or five miles, or whatever it is, above her ankles in dirt, and alone, quite alone! What could she mean by it? It seems to me to show an abominable sort of conceited independence, a most country-town indifference to decorum.”