Struggling to get in your daily steps? It may be your city’s fault

If you have trouble walking more, know that it is not necessarily a failure of the will. The planners have designed American cities not only to prioritize the car, but to hinder the pedestrian – too few sidewalks, oily tracks that cut the neighborhoods, tentacular parking lots instead of the parks. However, the study after the study describes the abundant advantages of mental and physical health to simply put one foot in front of the other, especially for the elderly and people with disabilities who cannot manage a vigorous exercise like the race. And that says nothing about the climatic advantages of walking more and driving less.

It is reasonable to assume that if the cities have made themselves more accessible on foot, with bridges and sidewalks and safer intersections, it would encourage people to walk more. “We all have busy lives, and our behavior is often very shaped by the environment in which we work, live and play,” said Karen Lee, a public health researcher at the University of Alberta. “If it is easy to do something, in general, you will do it more, and you will probably keep it longer.”

But quantifying the influence of walking on walking rates was difficult. To this end, the researchers have exploited a huge set of data of more than 5,400 users of the Azumio Argus activities follow -up to see what happened when these people moved cities with low walking scores to those with high scores, or vice versa. Combined, these people have moved almost 7,500 times between 1,600 cities across the United States: for example, they can have gone from Dallas, with a score of 45, in Chicago, with a score of 78.

The impact of urban march was dramatic. On average, people recorded 5,574 steps every day, but it jumped from 1,100 steps if they went from a low -valley place to a high place – the equivalent of an additional 11 minutes of rescue each day. In a little intriguing symmetry, people who move in the other direction have reduced their march by a similar amount. People who enter and outside the city of New York exceptionally accessible on foot (score of 89) have shown an even more spectacular gain or loss of 1,400 stages per day.

The symmetry of the stages won or lost to each movement shows that the trend does not concern life choices, but the influence of urban housing itself. “The absolute key was to create this natural experience, to observe the same person in several different environments,” said Tim Althoff, computer scientist at Washington University and the main author of a new article describing the results of the journal Nature. “It really gave us solid evidence that it is not only a personal context, but that it is also the environment that has an impact on the amount of walking.”

So what is walking, exactly? In other words, this is a measure of the ease with which you can go to essential places on foot. If you can do all your daily races without a car, you probably live somewhere with a score between 90 and 100. Between 70 and 89, it is most of your shopping and between 50 and 69, some of them. (You can find the score of your neighborhood here.)

Ideally, an area must be filled with schools, restaurants, parks and stores, therefore a critical determinant here is density. While Dallas has a walking score of 45 in part because it extends, NYC has 89 because 8.5 million people live in dense accommodation surrounded by all kinds of equipment. But the Big Apple also provides a large network of sidewalks and other infrastructures that facilitate the movement of people who do it, which also allows disabled people to move more easily. “Investing in sidewalks, safe intersections and mixed use zoning that puts parks and stores closer to houses is not only a convenience,” said Althoff. “It is a direct investment in the long -term health of your citizens.”

But the big cities are not unique in their march. Any community can at least have an accessible nucleus on foot – think of the picturesque cities of the American Heartland, where the hairdressing salons behave against grocers and hardware stores. Before the automobile, it was just obvious logistically for residents to make a single trip to the main drag to do all their shopping. But once the car has arrived, spreading has settled and businesses and services have been driven from the city center. Then, the large -scale stores settled in the suburbs and, later, exurves, with their vast parking lots. This change occurred at the hidden economic cost: research shows that the streets accessible on foot considerably strengthens visits to retail stores compared to the areas centered on the car.

Although the built environment may not seem easily changed, cities have several ways to get more suitable for pedestrians. “One is the street itself – to calm traffic, facilitating crossing, reducing the noise, stress and fear that are associated with these types of places,” said Mike McGinn, the former mayor of Seattle (walking score: 73), who is now an executive director of America Walks, a non -profit organization which advocates for walking.

Another tactic is to create more parks, as in abandoned lots, where people can make fun and completely avoid cars, and even grow smaller green spaces by the roadside. Planting more trees along the sidewalks also provides shade, helping to stimulate walking in a stifling summer. These green bits also reduce urban temperatures, reduce floods by absorbing rainwater and support biodiversity, in particular pollinating insects. Even better, such spaces can have benches so that people rest during their walks.

These changes in the districts encourage residents to do more exercise, consciously or unconsciously. The World Health Organization recommends that adults receive 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise (which includes walking, gardening and cycling quietly) each week, but a third of people around the world are missing this goal. “We know that adhesion to these physical activity recommendations is really important to prevent chronic diseases, promoting positive mental health, preventing premature mortality,” said Stephanie Prince Ware, a researcher who studies the built environment and physical activity at the Canada Public Health Agency and at the University of Ottawa but was not involved in the study. “Each movement counts, and the idea is that we want to make people move as much as they can.”

Indeed, if each city in the United States had the same walk as Chicago, 36 million additional Americans would respond to the directives for physical activity, calculated Althoff. “Although the change in individual behavior is important,” said Althoff, “our work shows that the creation of environments favorable to activities can serve as a powerful complement, which allows entire populations to lead a healthier life more easily.”