Walking In Your Neighborhood: It's Not Just a Mild Workout

by Alan Durning, Sightline Institute

Compact, walkable communities—the opposite of poorly planned sprawl—are the solution to some of our biggest shared challenges, from childhood obesity to social isolation, from crash deaths to disappearing farmland, from the high price of gas to the architectural blight of strip development.

They're even one of our most powerful weapons against climate change—they conserve fossil fuels like nobody's business. (It takes effort to burn gasoline when everything is so close to your front door.)

But the main reason to love walkable neighborhoods is their human energy: they're fun, lively, memorable... not boring. They're the kinds of places where you might bump into a long-lost friend; stumble across creative inspiration, whether for a song or a new business; or meet the love of your life. (That's why they're becoming among the most sought-after addresses around.)

Still, such qualities are—if valuable—also intangible.

Pearl District, Portland. Walk Score 99 - Walkers' Paradise.

Study the Walk Score walkability maps and you'll be able to see the walkable places—where every eight-year-old can walk to a library, every eighty-year-old can walk to a park bench, and every twenty-one-year-old can walk home from a bar. (And where every eighty-year-old can walk home from a bar, too.)

Study America's Most Walkable Neighborhoods and you'll see the best places for walking. (Which, to my mind, are the best cities for everyone.)