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Walkable cities sneak exercise into daily life. Coffee runs, grocery trips and commutes turn into steps that boost dopamine, mood and energy.
Car dependent cities keep you parked in traffic and at desks, fuelling sedentary habits linked to depression and cognitive decline.
Walkable cities invite chance encounters. Smiles on sidewalks, quick chats with neighbours and local shop hellos build connection and fight loneliness.
Car dependent cities keep people alone in cars and homes where isolation quietly chips away at mental well being.
Walkable cities give you options to stroll, bike or take transit. Less car dependence means less traffic stress, more freedom and calmer mornings.
Car dependent cities lock you into unpredictable commutes, noise and road rage that spike cortisol and strain mental health daily
Walkable cities weave green parks and trees into everyday life. Nature exposure lowers stress, improves focus and lifts mood.
Car dependent cities replace trees with asphalt and noise, pumping out pollution that can worsen anxiety, irritability and cognitive performance.
Walkable cities naturally promote activity, connection, calm & nature which are all protectors of mental health.
Car dependent cities lead to more isolation, stress & less movement.
How we build cities is not just transport planning. It needs to consider mental health planning.
Yes but also a walkable city has to be a sitable city! I’m not about to enforce extra unneeded walk time under the climate change summer sun to an elderly person who enjoys the pleasure of irreversible knee damage that the state did not want to solve nor even palliate.
Yes, there will be plenty of place for outdoor seating space and shade from trees and water and stuff once there no cars in the cities (and countries). Also good public transport if it’s a bad knee day.
I was staying near Austin, tx a while back. We wanted to get some fast food at like 2am, so we chartered a shuttle for like $5 for a round trip to a 24hr joint. And we probably could have walked! Its insane what good public transport can do.
Twitter is such shit. who types that much with character limits. can’t even be bothered to read that broken mess of posts
I still sometimes ask myself what was wrong with the web forum that it needed to be replaced by modern “social media” formats…
Live in a highly walkable city; can confirm.
Pretty sure walkable cities also have desks, but the rest is solid.
Sure, but walking/biking to the local rapid station to then walk to your job is much better than taking 24 steps from your home to your car. And then if you decide to go out for lunch at work, you can walk a block over to a cafe or deli and then walk back. If you have a local produce shop that’s a 15 minute walk from your home, you will likely prefer walking out there 3 times a week for groceries than driving out to a grocery shop once a week. Lots of little walks and rides add up to make you much healthier than the sedentary lifestyle encouraged by suburban life.
I agreed with everything else, just found the inclusion of desks to be silly.
Leaving my house which has a desk and Internet connection to go to a place with a desk and an Internet connection sounds ridiculous.
Nope, in walkable cities all desks have little treadmills under them.
What are top five best walkable cities in the US that are also affordable?
They’re not affordable, sadly. Walkable cities are so amazingly great that people will pay a lot of money to live in them. And they have to, because the demand is huge, but they’re illegal to build, so the supply is tiny.
In short, Americans are dumb.
I’m not sure I could name 5, period
What I was afraid of. Walkable cities is a great a noble thing. It just sucks we aren’t making those in America.
bear in mind that american “cities” are basically small countries, i’m sure there’s at least a hundred “towns” or districts of “cities” that are walkable and affordable, but the “cities” are so stupid huge that they have a bunch of variation in them.
Pennsylvania’s got you covered with Pittsburgh and Philly.
Pittsburgh has great walking but its transit is quite limited. Philly has good transit (for USA).
Both very affordable compared to other cities.
Chicago is pretty similar to Philly in terms of affordability, walkability and transit.
Trying to decide if these could have data backing them up. Clearly if you look at people who walk/bike to work in our current cities, they will be healthier. But I would assume this is a selection effect? And probably not much less lonely? I was under the impression that loneliness was high everywhere.
Curious if transit systems really are more reliable than the typical car commute. I’ve certainly had missed connections, bus breakdowns, and people jumping in front of trains.
And I didn’t follow why a walkable city will have more green spaces. Surely in a capitalism we’ll still have strong pressure to fill most of that.
It’s not really a “walkable” city if you are getting ass-blastes by the sun in the middle of summer. My small town is definitely a walkable city and has trees lining pretty much every street since something has ro go between the road and the sidewalk.
Trees are ideal because they:
- Will stop a car dead in its tracks if it drifts towards the sidewalk Produce shade to keep the surrounding area cool Are natural sound insulation (my town is on a busy cargo rail line and i never hear trains in the summer, but hear them frequently in the winter when the trees are bare) reduce pollution and increase air quality
Any town that is trying to become more walkable will put trees everywhere they are a cheap and easy way to make everything more pleasant.
The most walkable place I’ve lived in had pretty sparse greenery (to be fair, it was quite north). Shade from the sun comes from the residential and commercial buildings stacked high, with relatively narrow streets and alleyways.
I agree trees are great. Just not obvious to me that more walkable designs necessarily include them.
I’m along the south shore of Lake Erie, so trees are a godsend in my town in the summer. I live a block away from the main downtown in a west facing apartment. My apartment would absolutely fry in the summer if it wasn’t for the massive maple tree outside my apartment shading the place. The trees downtown aren’t very large, but if the city were to get rid of the on street parking downtown and focus on pedestrianizing the area, they could absolutely grow some beautiful oaks to offer shade at noon in the summer. They make being outside more pleasant, and if being outside is pleasant, people are going to walk more. My parents live in a 10 year old suburb in Houston with non-existent tree cover and it makes day time walks a
Also, just because i want to keep talking about how much i love my little walkable city, the city government recently started a program where if you have a patch of dead grass/gravel on the roadside next to your home, they will come out and plant a tree there. Residents are also able to take yard trimmings to the waste treatment plant in town and receive free mulch on a first come/first served basis.
That’s wonderful! I was amazed at how green and alive everything was when I went through Michigan, despite getting so dark in the winter.
I agree towns could put in more park space, but they could also put in more seating for restaurants, shops or water features, public service expansions, warehouses, housing, and so on. A good city will split between them, and common green spaces will show up. I’m curious what the range of ratios look like (especially over time).
And my city has a bunch of parking lots scattered aroun town, so it’s not like they need the street parking, PLUS, this is MAGA country so everyone is driving massive trucks that can’t parallel park anyway. But if you threaten to take away a parking space, people freak out. But people freak out whenever you propptany change, so might as well do something that has been shown to improve everyone’s quality of life.
Well, when you put it that way
Wish I could invite twice
This sentiment is great, but I have 2 dogs, and play loud drums, and have loud dirt bikes…neighbors would hate me.
Walkable towns / cities doesn’t have to be high density housing, just means you need actual sidewalks and public transportation.
Oh, i see! I do wish I had a bike trail near me. Damn impossible to bike without about getting ran over.
On the metro in my city, the dogs are better behaved than the humans, and the drummers get tips. You could just ride your dirt bike to places instead of transporting it on a truck.
so long as you’re willing to pay the actual cost of such a lifestyle, but unfortunately you’re almost certainly not doing so, because if you did you’d be complaining about how expensive it is.
I have enough as it is. I’m just trying to put in perspective why some people see this as unlivable conditions for them. You can’t put an outdoorsy family of 5 in a tiny apartment.
