Before getting into trains and cities, my life was largely spent thinking about swimming. It’s difficult to put into words how much the sport, the activity, and the simple joy of being in water have given me. As a sport, it offered me the opportunity to compete at a high level and understand myself through the lens of competition. As an activity, it gave my scrambled teenage mind a refuge from a world I struggled to understand. As a result of some combination of those two things, I find immense joy in the simple feeling of being in water.

So many of my formative memories came from swimming that it’s impossible to disentangle myself from it, even five years since swimming with any sort of regularity (maybe it’s high time to get back into it though!). But seeing as my life now has transitioned into thinking much more about cities and such, I’ve found myself dwelling more deeply on the role swimming plays in society and the physical landscape of the sport.

I’ve often talked about how strange I felt in college when my teammates would be so shocked that I didn’t have a driver’s license before, but given the suburbanized landscape of swimming and the fact that 100% of my friends in college were swimmers, I’m not sure what I had expected. It was something I really should have been aware of growing up, though I guess my Madison superiority complex got in the way. In retrospect, the two major pools for fast meets in Wisconsin (before the new UW pool got built anyways) were Waukesha South and Schroeder (in Brown Deer) – both Milwaukee suburbs. Tons of the other swimmers who I considered to be my peers and who similarly pursued swimming in college were suburbanites – from Middleton, Monona, and Verona especially. Still, I didn’t really think too much about this as a kid.

But in college, it became much harder to not see though it still didn’t occupy much of my headspace; even though seemingly everyone I met who was “serious” about swimming in Ohio was from the Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dayton, Toledo, or Columbus suburbs. While I did self consciously identify myself as being from Madison proper (though somewhat tongue-in-cheekily, I mean it’s the west side of Madison for gods sake) my interests laid well outside the societal construction of swimming so that was about the end of that.

Competitive Swimming and Suburbia

Of the 168 people I could identify from Wikipedia as having won an Olympic or World Champs medal since 2000, 122 of them are from the suburbs (by high school attended or primary residence). Given that about 65% of Americans live in the largest county in a metropolitan statistical area*, 76% of medalists at a major swimming event in the last 25 years being from the suburbs feels significant.

*note on methodology here: I am mixing things slightly. Depending on the state, core county can be a very bad way to understand being in a core city or not (looking at you Los Angeles) but it’s also the most straightforward data to reference.

Sure, Michael Phelps makes hay about being a Baltimore Ravens faithful, but both he and his storied North Baltimore Aquatic Club are more accurately described as being from Towson. NBAC has since expanded into North Baltimore proper, but has pools located in parts of Baltimore with prevailing median incomes double the city at large and are pearly white. I bring up Baltimore not just because Michael Phelps has star power, but also because Baltimore has a history of segregation with its pool facilities worth taking a closer look at. Before an NAACP lawsuit forced the city to desegregate its public pools in 1955, Baltimore had just one public pool which allowed Black Baltimoreans – Druid Hill No. 2 – out of seven overall in a city that was about one-quarter Black in the 1950s.

This summer, three pools were closed for being in a poor state of repair – all of which were in majority Black parts of Baltimore. It’s unlikely that NBAC had to suspend practice during these times. The sad reality is that many US cities chose to simply close their pools rather than integrate them – as evidenced in Palmer v. Thompson, leaving Black Americans without any options for swimming. In the context of anti-Black racism, suburbia, and divestment in modern US history, it’s hard to be surprised by any of this. I mean there have been just as many Black men to win gold medals at the Olympics since 2000 as there have been White men who won gold medals at the Olympics and also attended January 6th (it’s one each).

But this is not just an issue in Baltimore, it’s a national crisis. Almost all of the top swim clubs in the country are suburb oriented – with the only club being even nominally oriented around a city being Lakeside in Louisville. Swim Atlanta may look like it would be, but every practice location is actually in a north Atlanta suburb. SwimMAC Carolina, routinely the top club in the nation, is nominally located in Charlotte – but has its main training center in Huntersville. Nation’s Capital, Katie Ledecky’s old club, manages 13 different practice facilities – only one of which is in our nation’s capital. While access to elite swimming clubs is hardly the most pressing issue at hand, it does speak to where investment and prestige is centered in the swimming community.

Swimming is More Than Just a Sport

Even if swimming is a highly participated in sport, it remains a niche thing to be into. But the real injustice in swimming pool access has nothing to do with the Olympics and everything to do with safety. According to the CDC, drowning is the leading cause of death for children aged 1 to 4, and the second leading cause of death for children aged 5 to 14 (behind vehicular violence..). These deaths are preventable, especially for children over the age of 5. Learning to swim is a life skill that everyone needs to have, and having pool access gated by any amount of income is unacceptable.

But unfortunately, the “fiscal realities” of recreational budgets mean that pools are often the first things to get entry fees. It’s unclear to me on the origins of paying for pool use, but it does make some amount of sense. Pools are relatively expensive to operate, and charging user fees is often seen as a good way to ensure that they can remain operational and that people who use the pools pay for their upkeep and maintenance. Marginally higher taxes could theoretically pay for free pool access for all, but even that is unlikely to be enough to guarantee that everyone has the opportunity to learn how to swim.

A cursory look at pool locations in the city of Portland reveals a sad trend. Huge parts of the city have functionally no access to a pool, and those that do often are faced with regressive fees and poor physical conditions. A few summers ago, I swam semi-regularly at Creston Pool and found the pool itself to be in pretty poor shape. Last summer, I’m fairly sure it didn’t even open – either for repairs or because of a lack of staffing.

Things are very different in the Washington County suburbs though. Beaverton manages six different indoor swimming pools (compared to a measly three in Portland). Both Tigard and Tualatin have a public indoor pool, as does Hillsboro. By county, there are 9 public indoor pools in Washington County, compared to 6 (with one currently closed) in Multnomah County. Interestingly, most of these pools are located at high schools and Portland is in the midst of a massive school bond that involves reconstructing almost every high school in the city. Unfortunately, zero public pools are being built in the process. As a result, the number of quality indoor pools that are publicly accessible (below in blue) is unlikely to change much for pool loving Portlanders.

This is a massive missed opportunity, and is something that the city seems to be aware of to some extent. They are currently sponsoring a “Schools to Pools” program for second graders, which offers free swim lessons to second graders during school hours. This is a great program, but it seems like it would be easier (both administratively and practically) if the students were traveling to the feeder high school rather than a potentially distant park. I can’t really comment much more on this particular issue – I’m not even sure if it was something that was considered back in 2012 when the bond measure was approved. But I do think that speaks to how swimming is not really seen as part of the cultural fabric of the city of Portland.

It Wasn’t Always This Way

Before the rapid suburbanization of America in the 1950s, pools were primarily urban amenities. New York boasts a huge network of public pools, in large part due to Robert Moses’ personal investment in swimming, but most of these pools are outdoors and not suitable for modern competitions. As beautiful as they are, they stand more as a relic of a bygone age, when public access to pool facilities was seen as a key part of living a healthy and righteous life. There’s a fair amount of patronizing wrapped up in this, but I still think it’s a good example of how pre-war America valued urban amenities.

While the most legendary US swimmer of the pre-war era, Duke Kahanamoku, was not a product of American urban culture as a native Hawaiian, but the second most prominent one was. Johnny Weissmuller hailed from Chicago, and grew up swimming in Lake Michigan before being recruited to swim for the Illinois Athletic Club (located on Michigan Avenue). He also became the definitive Tarzan after his swimming career, but that’s not very interesting to me. What is interesting is that a German immigrant in Chicago was pulled into a life of competitive swimming while living in the second largest city in the country.

His story isn’t so different from Lenny Krayzelburg’s I suppose, whose family emigrated to Los Angeles from Russia in the 1980s but by the time Krayzelburg was setting world records swimming had become entrenched in white suburbia. His most prominent teammates at the 2000 Olympics – Anthony Ervin, Dara Torres, Kaitlin Sandeno, and Ed Moses – were all from the LA suburbs. In contrast, Weissmuller’s teammates tended to be from cities or rural communities – George Kojac had a similar life story but in New York rather than Chicago. Though the sport certainly skewed towards the gentry in those days as well, the ubiquity of public pools made stories like Kojac and Weissmuller much closer to the norm than they are today.

I think it’s important to remember this. From my compiled list of every US medalist, only three of the 168 hail from properly urban areas – Lenny Krayzelburg (LA), Leah Neal (NYC), and Ben Wildman-Tobriner (San Francisco). These cities used to be hotbeds for swimmers, but have been reduced to mere trickles since the 1950s – and for me, there is no urban renaissance without swimming. It’s just too important to me.

What Does It All Mean?

It means that kids who grow up in cities have a much more difficult time learning how to swim. It means that if they do decide they enjoy swimming, that they probably will end up in the suburbs competing. Which in turn means that they’ll have to drive. In retrospect, my own personal story of not driving until college was very dependent on my parents and teammates being willing and able to drive me to swim meets. Sure, we may have walked from the Four Points Sheraton to the Schroeder YMCA, but getting to the hotel without a car from Madison would have be onerous to say the least.

And while my childhood and early adulthood was filled with tons of great experiences in the All City Swim League, I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about the suburban nature of the league. Out of the 13 current pools, only one of them (Goodman) is both in the city and in a part of the area that was urbanized before 1940. And Goodman is also the newest addition to the mix, as well as Madison’s only outdoor public pool. Of the remaining 12, three are country clubs (Hawks Landing, Nakoma, Maple Bluff), two are suburban public pools (Middleton, Monona), six were founded as suburban tennis/pool clubs (Parkcrest, Hill Farm, High Point, West Side, Ridgewood, Seminole), and one is a quasi-public pool for a rich enclave (Shorewood).

All but Goodman, Maple Bluff, and Monona are on the West Side – historically the wealthier part of the city. Though the league has it roots in a lake-based city meet held downtown, it feels significant to me that the closest pool to downtown Madison (Shorewood) is not technically in the city limits and is one of the more expensive pools for summer memberships. Full disclosure, Shorewood was my summer pool and I have basically nothing but good things to say about it but it certainly represents a higher income strata of the area than I think I really understood as a child. But part of growing up is understanding your own life in a broader social structure, and my rosy eyed memories of Shorewood can only carry me so far.

I may have been too young to recall specifics about when Goodman entered the league around 2007, but I do recall some conversations on if they were “ready” or not. Maybe I’m being a bit presumptuous, but I find that to be a little troubling now. Goodman is by far the most affordable of the summer pools in town – with family memberships for Madison residents being $185. The second most affordable option in the city – West Side – is about $560 dollars. Maybe prices like these didn’t dissuade my family from becoming part of the swimming world in Madison, but it’s a significant barrier to entry to have to fork over $500+ for membership at a pool with fees to join the team on top of that.

The privatized and suburban nature of even my dreamy childhood swimming experience – one that I have held up as a model for getting kids interested in and excited about swimming deeply troubles me now. And feeling this way has been a part of a longer term project of understanding my and my family’s place in society, I’d still maintain that Madison is a better than typical place to grow up – especially for pool access. All the public high schools have pools, and they all offer swim lessons through MSCR and we swam in our freshman gym class in high school as well. The All City League remains among the largest outdoor swim meets in the country – with more than 2,000 participants yearly in a city of just 250,000 but more steps are needed to make it truly accessible.

Maybe not everyone wants or needs to be on the local swim team, but given the nature of swimming as a fundamental part of the human experience, it’s worth asking if we can do better.

Publicly Funded Pool Expansion, Now and Forever

The missing piece of the swimming landscape in the US really is publicly accessible pools. I don’t doubt that most municipalities have low income programs for improving access to the public pools they operate now, but physical access remains a large barrier. If you’re a kid on the far east side of Madison without a car and want to participate in the All City Swim League or just want to relax at an outdoor pool, you’re either faced with an hour on the bus to Goodman, or a 20 minute bike ride to cross city lines into Monona. In Portland, St. Johns residents are faced with nearly an hour on the bus or bike to get to the nearest indoor pool (made far worse by the closure of the Columbia Park pool) if they want to swim in the fall, winter, or spring. It’s not enough to just have public pools, they also ought to be convenient and affordable.

In Portland, there is a dire need for more indoor pool space. Most high schools do not have pools and seemingly will not have them at any point in the future. Only David Douglas – which is a separate district from Portland Public Schools – has any sort of pool at all. If our suburban neighbors can manage to have pools at all their high schools, why can’t we?

In Madison, there is a big need for more public outdoor pool space – particularly on the near East and far East sides. The city has an existing civic gem of a quasi-public swimming institution that is exceptional by any metric, and they would be wise to tap into that more.

And while pools are expensive to operate, they are something our society needs to function well. My experience as a recreational and competitive swimmer seriously biases me to the value that a swim team can add to someone’s life but it offered me more than I could ever put into words. It’s not just a charity service to teach a kid to swim, being a strong and confident swimmer is a life skill that can open your world. As a society, we ought to take the vital life skill of swimming more seriously, and we ought to find a way to have quality amenities accessible to everyone – whether you live in a rural, suburban, or urban part of the country.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next time.