Moving to a walkable city can add 1,100 steps to your day
February 17, 2026
2 min reading
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Your daily steps may depend more on your zip code than your willpower
Researchers found that walkable city design, not personal motivation, was the key factor that pushed people to take an extra 1,100 steps per day.
A neighborhood’s walkability is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem: Does living in a walkable city make you walk more, or do active people choose to live where it’s easier to walk? To investigate, researchers analyzed smartphone data between 2013 and 2016 for two million people, including more than 5,000 people moving between more than 1,600 U.S. cities. Tim Althoff, a computer scientist at the University of Washington, and his colleagues found that after moving to more walkable cities, people took about 1,100 more steps per day, which equates to 11 minutes of additional daily walking. What’s more intriguing is that these extra steps were part of brisk walks, a physical activity that improves health and could help reduce the risk of death anywhere. Meanwhile, the data showed that people who moved between cities with similar walkability did not change their activity levels. The findings suggest that built environments, rather than personal choice alone, could affect not only the quantity but also the intensity of exercise their residents get.
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MORE FEET, MORE STEPS
Each square represents a pair of relocation cities. One axis shows the evolution of the city’s pedestrian potential, and the other axis shows the evolution of the number of daily steps. Those who moved to more walkable cities added about 1,100 steps per day, and those who moved to less walkable places reduced their activity by a similar amount.
WHAT IF ALL CITIES IN THE UNITED STATES WALK LIKE NEW YORK AND CHICAGO?
If all U.S. cities had the Chicago Walk Score of 78, the average person would take 443 more steps per day and gain 24 additional minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per week: enough for 11.2 percent of people, or 36 million more Americans, to meet the aerobic activity guideline goals. And if everyone walked like New Yorkers, an even larger share — 14.5 percent, or about 47 million people — would achieve those goals.
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