The Four Rules for a Good Walk
In 2017, city planner Jeff Speck gave a talk on the four ways to make a city more walkable:
In the typical American city, in which most people own cars and the temptation is to drive them all the time, if you’re going to get them to walk, then you have to offer a walk that’s as good as a drive or better. What does that mean? It means you need to offer four things simultaneously: there needs to be a proper reason to walk, the walk has to be safe and feel safe, the walk has to be comfortable, and the walk has to be interesting.
I know Speck is talking about cities here, but these four rules — useful, safe, comfortable, and interesting — get at something about living in rural Vermont that I’ve always had trouble articulating: for a place that’s so outdoors-oriented with so many trails and places to hike, a good walk can be difficult to find. I can walk out my door to take a walk that’s sorta safe (walking against traffic on the side of the road — some assholes don’t slow down or move over that much). Comfort is variable: cars kick up dust and my house is surrounded by pretty steep hills. I can’t really walk to anywhere useful, and there aren’t too many possible routes so the interest of the scenery, though beautiful in the summer, gets stale. So then I’m left with driving somewhere to walk, which always just bums me out.
Anyway, this explains why every time I get to walkable city (Tokyo, Rome, NYC, Paris), I am instantly like, yes!! This! This is a walk.
Related reading: Speck is the author of Walkable City (Amazon) and Walkable City Rules (Amazon). (via paul stout)
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Your description of walking in your area sounds very much like mine in the rolling British countryside. It's nice enough but, as you say, there are limited routes and you have to keep an ear out for vehicles.
It's also all farmland which is very different from national-park-style open countryside - while there are footpaths across fields, you're soon back on a road. You're aware that this is a working landscape, not the wilds.
And, as pretty as the scenery is, I soon end up getting a bit bored on a countryside walk.
But get me in a city and I can walk for miles - there's so much to see! So much variety!
re your walking against traffic note, it seems to me this is not the norm in my part of the US (Massachusetts) and I'm not sure why. Is it because walking on the right (i.e. with traffic) is how people are encouraged to walk in schools?
Huh, weird. After living in the country for a time, I feel like there's almost a natural gravitation towards the unspoken rule of walking on roadsides: against traffic unless you're near the crest of a hill or on the inside of a corner, in which case you switch to the other side to make yourself more visible to traffic (and then switch back again at the top of the crest or mid-bend of the curve).
Maybe it's a country vs suburbs distinction. I'm in the burbs and where there's no pavement (sidewalk) I find myself in the minority by walking against traffic.
I suspect these four principles — useful, safe, comfortable, and interesting — also apply to the life many of us want to be leading online. And that these traits apply to the way we remember The Web We Lost (even if that wasn’t always the reality).
I live in a quasi-rural area but work in the center of a city, and the same thing is true about walking in both places: the burden of safety is on the pedestrian. Whether I'm out for a run or walking to lunch, I'm constantly reminded of the need to maximize visibility because seemingly every passing driver is looking at their phone. And that's without considering that southern cities like mine (Nashville) are particularly un-friendly to pedestrians to begin with.
Helpful that you posted this the same day as World Monitor. 5 minutes on there and I need a walk.
I have joked forever that if I had a wellness pamphlet, it would just say "Drink a glass of water. Take a walk. "
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