Walkability, Urban Access and Rural Village Life: An American in Bavaria

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The aritlce was orginally published in the APA International Division's InterPlan.

If you had pointed out Seubersdorf to me on a map prior to our move to Germany in 2010 and asked if I wanted to live there, the answer might have been a resolute ‘no’.

My husband, an officer in the US Army at the time, had received orders to be stationed in Germany. We were excited- it’s exactly what we both wanted. In fact, on our first date two years prior, ‘moving to Germany’ was one of several interests we discovered that we shared in common.

I had lived in Germany (and other countries in Europe) before, but in dense urban settings, or close to them. I didn’t grow up as a city kid and I definitely was not biased against living in nonurban settings, but a small Bavarian village nestled deep in the countryside was far off my radar. Still, I had an open mind to the adventure. My husband had requested Germany, and to have the request granted was really exciting for us. The unknown of location was also exciting. Arriving in the atmospheric chill of late Autumn in Bavaria, a large state in southeastern Germany, was momentous.

As we found a home and began to settle in for our first winter, we realized, with gratitude, that we happened to have chosen a rental property in a village that had well-maintained sidewalks (not all the villages did), two grocery stores (both within a 1-minute walk from our home), at least a few bakeries and cafes, a bank, kindergarten, hotel inn and more.

Seubersdorf is a village of a little over 5,000 inhabitants. While it did feel remote, with its size and rural surroundings, we were quite excited by the walkable proximity to diverse services and amenities in the community. I didn’t know the term ‘walkability’ back then, but the concept was a focal feature of our life in very meaningful ways (as it has been through many chapters of life). I say we were grateful to discover this walkable aspect of our new community as, many of the villages in this rural region were not walkable and also lacked one other thing our new home village had: a train station.

View of Seubersdorf

During our first winter, we delighted in our ability to walk through part of the village from our home to the train station, and from there to one of the nearby cities. Nürnberg, the 2nd largest city in Bavaria, was about 45-minutes by train and Regensburg, a cozy city on Danube, could be reached in a little over a 30-minutes. In only four minutes by train, you could be in the neighboring town of Parsberg which had many more amenities, and several wonderful restaurants that we enjoyed going to and dining with friends at on a regular basis.

My husband's route to work at the local military post (where I also worked for a period of time) was only possible by car, but the presence of this train station gave us the freedom to not drive outside of those work commutes. For our leisure outings to nearby cities (and other destinations), this was a game changer as we could leave the car at home and enjoy our experiences and rail rides.

Over time, as I began to work as a freelance photographer locally, I got a great taste of the rail commuter experience, using the train to get to clients in the cities. City locations were also popular location requests for family photoshoots, which would often fill my weekend schedule, and for which I always used the train to commute. The availability and ease of train travel and proximity to nearby urban centers was truly transformative for our experience.

Renting a home in a village gave us the space and peace we enjoy in our home setting and we also were fortunate to experience ‘community’ in that little village, befriending numerous locals and enjoying local social connections.

Being in touch with many other families in other villages of the region, we learned about the isolation and difficulty some people endured due to the car dependence required when living in a non-walkable village with no public transportation connectivity,, a potentially serious problem when, for example, a couple shares one vehicle or multiple dependents rely on one family member to drive them everywhere.

When I shared this experience on LinkedIn (see post here), it was fascinating to read the comment response of Interplan’s own Editor:

"I had a similar experience moving to a little village in Germany as a high school exchange student. When I found out that I was going to be living in a village that wasn't even visible on most maps, I dreaded the rural isolation and imagined that access to culture and entertainment would require long drives to the city.

What I discovered was that not only were all the essential conveniences of life within a short walk, but that young people rarely left the village for entertainment. There were concerts, events, markets, and activities, both programmed and informal. Ten years later, I went back to visit, and many of my high school friends had gone to college and had professional jobs, and they still lived in the village. The countryside didn't experience the brain drain nor the cultural desert we have come to expect of rural parts of the US.

Walkable villages are critical to the success of rural regions. In my book, Metrocoalescence, I propose a zoning paradigm to shift our rural development pattern from rural sprawl to Village-oriented development.” -Sky Tallmann, AICP

I am now a 3rd year Ph.D. student based in Poland and researching issues of urban mobility and am also the founder of Pedestrian Space, established in 2020, and dedicated to issues of walkability. My current work and research is largely focused on dense urban settings where many people have access to some form of public transportation as well as pedestrian infrastructure, but still opt to drive, lending to scenes of congestion familiar in cities around the world. The pressure for modal shifts to more sustainable mobility modes needs to be amplified in many urban areas and I find an interesting challenge to consider how to inspire modal shift in these contexts.

Examining the suburban and more rural contexts brings another set of challenges.

I have had as key themes to my public talks and urban mobility workshops the concept of transit inclusion and exclusion and find it useful to refer to my own lived experience with both:

What we experienced in that little Bavarian village was truly a transit ‘best practice’.

It was so liberating and practical to be able to commute on the train from the countryside to a busy urban center and back again with ease. My quality of life was brilliant. I felt completely free and empowered to go about my daily business with convenient access to the train.

I think of all the village residents who benefited from this access. People working in number of nearby cities. Older children studying at schools in nearby towns or cities and who also do not want to have to depend on their parents to be chauffeured around, elderly individuals who have stopped driving or no longer want to, people with mobility impairments or disabilities who depend on accessible transit to be able to move around the community and more.

Many experiences and diverse chapters of life have now led to this moment where I not only storytell but also research intersecting issues of mobility, accessible transit, quality of life, and community resilience. It was a treat to be welcomed to share my story here in the pages of InterPlan, to further contribute to insight on thriving pedestrian culture and mobility culture.