Abby Quillen

Freelance Content Marketing Writer and Editor

Walking

How Walkable is Your Neighborhood?

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I’m a huge fan of walking. I wrote about why I love it here. I take a walk at least once a day, rain or shine. And every time I wheel my son’s stroller out to the sidewalk in front of our house, I am grateful that we live in a walkable neighborhood.

So what makes a neighborhood walkable? This is how the folks at Walkscore.com define it:

  • A center: Walkable neighborhoods have a center, whether it’s a main street or a public space.
  • People: Enough people for businesses to flourish and for public transit to run frequently.
  • Mixed income, mixed use: Affordable housing located near businesses.
  • Parks and public space: Plenty of public places to gather and play.
  • Pedestrian design: Buildings are close to the street, parking lots are relegated to the back.
  • Schools and workplaces: Close enough that most residents can walk from their homes.
  • Complete streets: Streets designed for bicyclists, pedestrians, and transit.

My neighborhood only scores 63 out of 100 according to Walkscore’s criteria and earns their rank of “Somewhat Walkable”. I checked some of the other addresses I’ve lived at in the last six years. Most of them earn a higher score, because they were closer to downtown, which means they were closer to bookstores, restaurants, and other amenities.

But I think my neighborhood has something going for it that can’t be easily quantified – a culture of walking. Many of my neighbors are home during the day, many of them have young children, and they are often outside and out walking themselves. So my son and I invariably run into people we know when we’re on a walk. Occasionally we even go on walks with our neighbors. So we’re getting to know each other in a way that I’ve never experienced in a neighborhood, even those closer to more amenities.

My neighborhood is also safe, which I think makes a big difference to walkability. Sadly in a few of the other neighborhoods I’ve lived in, including a few that Walkscore deems more walkable, I didn’t feel comfortable walking alone at night. Especially when I lived alone, that meant the neighborhood was only walkable during daylight hours. And there just aren’t many of those in the winter.

So while I love Walkscore’s ranking system and would like to see urban planners put walkability first when designing or retrofitting cities, I’ve discovered that some of what makes a neighborhood walkable just can’t be easily measured.

If you’re curious, here are Walkscore.com’s most walkable cities:

  1. San Francisco, Walk Score 86
  2. New York, Walk Score 83
  3. Boston, Walk Score 79

And here are the ones they rank as least walkable:

  1. Charlotte, Walk Score 39
  2. Nashville, Walk Score 39
  3. Jacksonville, Walk Score 36

You can find out how your neighborhood scores here.

How walkable is your neighborhood? Do you agree with Walkscore’s rating?

9 Easy Ways to Improve Your Health

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Do you want to be healthier? Here are 9 easy (and inexpensive!) ways:

1.  Move more.

Dr. James Levine’s study on obesity indicates that increasing unplanned daily physical activity, like standing, walking, talking, cleaning, and fidgeting, can be a more effective way to lose weight than seeking out organized exercise. Increased daily activity may also be more preventative against cancer than recreational activities. Want to learn more? I wrote about it here.

2.  Retire your labor-saving devices

Adding more manual labor to your days is an easy way to increase daily physical activity. This time of year you can shovel snow, prune bushes and trees, hand wash dishes, sweep, clean, cook from scratch, take the stairs, etc. Manual labor makes us stronger and fitter and may also help us to ward off depression. (Plus you can pocket that cash you’d spend patronizing a gym.)

3. Go outside

Nature is good for us. Just viewing natural settings can lower blood pressure, reduce stress, and boost immunity.

4.  Plant a vegetable garden

How can you get moderate daily activity, reap the mental health benefits of manual labor, enjoy nature, and ensure a bounty of fresh (inexpensive) vegetables? Grow some veggies!

5. Commute car-free

A study of car and train commuters in New Jersey found that train commuters took 30 percent more steps per day. And perhaps more importantly, the train commuters reported significantly lower stress levels and better moods than the car commuters. That’s no small finding considering another study found that car commuters can experience greater stress than fighter pilots going into battle or riot policemen.

9 Easy Ways to Improve Your Health #wellness

6.  Relax

Learning to relax can have huge health benefits. Relaxation methods have been shown to slow heart rate, reduce blood pressure, increase  blood flow, reduce chronic pain, and improve concentration. You can do yoga or tai chi, listen to music, exercise, meditate, do guided visualization, get a massage, or just sit and drink a cup of tea.

7.  Call a friend

Many studies indicate that a good social support system can reduce stress levels and increase longevity. But a third of Americans report having fewer confidants than 20 years ago and 25 percent of Americans say they have no one at all to confide in. Are you stumped on how to make more friends? Start here or here.

8. Take a walk

A daily walk around your neighborhood is a great way to add more activity to your day and connect with your neighbors.

9.  Eat real food

In my three decades, I’ve already seen a number of health fads come and go. Fat was the nutritional pariah of the nineties. Then Y2K rolled around, carbs went out of style, and everyone started loading up on Omega-3s and antioxidants. Meanwhile, we slathered ourselves in sunscreen and treated sunny afternoons like radioactively contaminated Superfund sites. Except now everyone’s vitamin D deficient and popping D3 like Rolaids. My point is, perhaps we shouldn’t make too much of breaking health news, especially since so many studies are funded by the food companies that stand to gain from them. (I wrote more about this topic here.)

So what should we eat? Michael Pollen’s mantra is probably a good way to go: “Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.”

[clickToTweet tweet=”Getting healthy doesn’t need to be complicated. Try these 9 easy ways to improve your #health” quote=”Getting healthy doesn’t need to be complicated. Try these 9 easy ways to improve your health.”]

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The Art of Walking

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My baby pulls himself up now, teeters on a knee and one foot, and then plunks down. He’ll take his first steps soon, sway and totter across the living room floor, and join me in one of my favorite activities – walking.

I’ve loved to walk for as long as I can remember. My parents walked me and my sister to and from school each day until we were old enough to walk alone. We hiked in the Rocky Mountains most summer weekends. We strolled around our neighborhood after dinner. We did errands on foot, stopping at the bank, the hardware store, and the grocery store. My dad even wrote notes to get us out of school on crisp fall afternoons so we could amble along as a family, talk, and gaze at the streaks of red and orange aspen trees on the hillsides. Perhaps this is why walking feels like eating and breathing to me, like I’m not really living unless I’m doing it often.

Walking has factored into many of my big life decisions, like where I’ve lived and worked. I’ve been able to get to work or school on foot most days for my entire life. My commute has ranged from a few blocks to a few miles. I walked four miles a day throughout my pregnancy, right up until the day before my son’s birth. I even walked a couple of miles when I was in labor. I’ve walked up mountains, across beaches, through cities, and up and down a hallway countless times with a sleepy baby in my arms.

I love to walk without purpose, to set my own pace, to have nowhere to go, no time frame, nobody to meet, no one to talk to, and nothing in particular to think about. I love to walk to sort through something I’m writing; or reflect on a bad day; or listen to a podcast; or just meditate on my surroundings. I love to walk with my husband, a good friend, my mom, or my sister and let our conversations drift from topic to topic. I love to lull my baby to sleep on my back as I weave through neighborhoods, across parks, up hills, and down bike paths.

I hate that the word pedestrian also means dull, uninspired, unexciting, or humdrum. I’m convinced the world would be a better place if everyone who was able walked, strode, clomped, jaunted, sauntered, tramped, meandered, shuffled, plodded, and wandered a lot more. We used to. In On Foot: A History of Walking, Joseph A. Amato points out that it’s only very recently that humans have sat and ridden “first on horses and in carriages, then on trains and bicycles, and finally in cars, trucks, buses, and airplanes.” He argues this revolution in the way we live has changed not only our bodies but our minds. It’s altered, “conceptions of space, distance, motion, movement, and the amount of energy necessary to invest in travel.” Amato’s book, as well as Rebecca Solnit’s magnificent Wanderlust: A History of Walking, and Henry David Thoreau’s essay “Walking,” exemplify that walking is anything but pedestrian. It inspires passion, magic, creativity – art.

The art of walking

In honor of one of my favorite activities: here are six reasons to lace on some comfortable shoes and hit the pavement, path, or trail today (and every other day too!):

1. Your health

Moderate daily exercise is essential for good health, and walking is a great exercise. The Honolulu Heart Study followed retired non-smoking men over the age of sixty for twelve years and found that men who walked just two miles a day cut their risk of premature death nearly in half. Of course most people know exercise is great for the heart. It may surprise you that the walkers were also two-and-a-half times less likely to die of cancer than their sedentary peers.  (New England Journal of Medicine, Jan 9, 1998)

2. The Environment

I’ve written about how much I love bikes . And walking is even easier on the earth than cycling. No one has to mine molybdenum, titanium, aluminum, or smelt steel for you to hit the pavement.  All you need is a comfortable pair of shoes (which you probably own anyway). The more trips we make on foot, the cleaner our air, water, and planet will be.

To make walking an even greener option, check out this Runner’s World article on the environmental “footprint” of running shoes, and consider supporting companies striving to make greener shoes. You can also drop off your used running shoes at a recycling center. Find one near you here.

3. Fresh Air

Richard Louv coined the term “nature deficit disorder” in his 2005 book Last Child in the Woods referring to the trend of children spending less time outdoors. Louv believes a lack of outdoors time leads to all sorts of behavioral problems in kids. Spending time in nature is undoubtedly good for children and adults alike. A daily walk allows you to note the gradual shifts in the seasons, watch the sun rise or set, keep track of the moon’s cycles, breathe in fresh air, explore the vast variety of plants and animals, and just be part of the natural world.

4. Problem solving

As Solnit writes in Wanderlust: A History of Walking, “the rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking.” It’s probably not a coincidence that so many of our great thinkers and writers were also great fans of walking – Thoreau, William Shakespeare, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William Wordsworth, John Adams, Soren Keirkegaard, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jane Austen, and more.

5. Family and Neighborhood Connections

A daily after-dinner stroll is not only good for digestion. It’s also a great time to catch up with your spouse or kids and get to know your neighbors. Check out your neighborhood’s “walk score” here.

6. It’s easy

My favorite thing about walking is how easy it is to incorporate into daily life. Just lace on some shoes, set a comfortable pace, and enjoy the scenery. That’s all it takes.

I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least..._ Henry David Thoreau #walking #health #mentalhealth

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What’s your favorite thing about walking? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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