No doubt a city’s walkability is largely due to conscious urban design.  Community planners and designers are thus tasked with creating cities that are both pedestrian- and environment-friendly.

As far as simplicity goes, nothing beats walking as a form of exercise.  For maximum health benefits, experts recommend 7,000 to 10,000 steps a day.

The bustling Gould street in Toronto, one of Canada’s most walkable cities. (Photo courtesy of Torontoist.com)

However, today’s work demands are confining us to our office chairs for majority of the day, week in and out.   At home, this is further reinforced by the lure of our device’s screen, whether they be smartphones, tablets, laptops, or TVs.  This sedentary lifestyle coupled with bad diet has effectively given rise to an epidemic of obesity in the US, with its attendant problems of diabetes and coronary heart disease.

Thus the recent call to action by the US Surgeon General to promote walking and walkable communities.

Walk Some Moar!

We’ve tackled walkable communities in this blog previously, and of course we’re all for it.

The simple and obvious premise is that by making our communities more walkable, people will be encouraged to walk more.  Make the sidewalks safe, convenient, and comfortable to use, and more people will use them.  So yes, a community’s walkability is largely tied to its urban design and green building: just look at the top three most walkable cities in the US according to WalkScore.com—New York, San Francisco, and Boston.  Through conscious design of their cityscape, these cities have enhanced the pedestrian experience better than others.

Nightly scene at Times Square in New York, U.S.’ # 1 walkable city (Photo courtesy of ZDNet.com)

To promote walkability, the Surgeon General website suggests cooperation among three important sectors: transportation, land use, and community design.  Below are some of the guidelines and strategies offered by the report:

• Design streets, sidewalks, and crosswalks that encourage walking for people of all ages and abilities.
• Improve traffic safety on streets and sidewalks.
• Keep existing sidewalks and other places to walk free from hazards.
• Adopt community planning, land use, development, and zoning policies and plans that support walking for people of all ages and abilities.
• Locate schools, worksites, businesses, parks, recreational facilities, and other places that people regularly use within walkable distance of each other.
• Support safe, efficient, and easy-to-use public transit systems and transit-oriented development.
• Provide safe and convenient access for all users to community locations that support walking, such as walking trails, parks, recreational facilities, and college campuses.
• Offer walking programs that address barriers, including physical limitations and safety concerns.
• Set up walking groups, buddy systems, and other forms of social support for walking that provide multiple opportunities to walk each week.
• Provide public education and awareness campaigns to promote walking and walkability and link these campaigns with other activities meant to increase walking.

Awareness Is Key

Especially important in all of this is education.  Many people are already aware, in some way or another, about the benefits of walking as an exercise, but aren’t just finding the right opportunities to do so.  Likewise, many people also mistakenly believe that a few minutes of exercise is good enough to combat the ill effects of all-day sitting.  Says biomechanist Katy Bowman, as interviewed by Fox News, “Actively sedentary is a new category of people who are fit for one hour but sitting around the rest of the day… You can’t offset 10 hours of stillness with one hour of exercise.”  And this is why making every bit of space in our communities as pedestrian-friendly as possible is important.

By educating people—from the young to the old, from all walks of life—about the benefits of walking and of having an active lifestyle for that matter, and making sure the spaces they move around are safe, comfortable, and convenient, we help instill a life-long positive value in them.  The reduced carbon footprint is also a big plus.

Two more advices to make your walk interesting and insightful: Walk with a friend.  Or, if walking  alone, fire up some music on your smartphone.