Urban Walking is the best…!

I’ve just written a book about the science of walking — how we do it, why we do it, where we do it, and why it’s good for us. I’m often asked about country walking (which I enjoy), but, If I’m honest about it, I generally prefer urban to rural walking. It’s right on my doorstep, and just needs a comfortable pair of shoes.

And, of course, walking is the way to get to know a new city: rambling out, about, on foot, taking in the sights and sounds and smells and sense of the new city. Enjoying getting footsore while noticing the little things making a city different, interesting, and great. Cities possess a vitality, attractions, upsides, and downsides. Walkable cities acquire a particularly sociable character. Cities attract people to live in them, despite their downsides. Why is this? The renowned social psychologist Stanley Milgram wrote a remarkable, and sometimes overlooked, paper entitled “The experience of living in cities” (1970[i]), where he presented an early social psychological analysis of city living and city life. Milgram was celebrated for his idiosyncratic and pioneering research, including his disturbing studies on obedience[ii].

In his ‘living in cities’ paper Milgram explores many facets of city life, from the high degree of stimulation cities provide, to the anonymity they afford. He also focuses on the tempo and pace of city life. By tempo and pace he is referring to the speed of life, and the quality of our interactions with each other. There is a density of social interaction afforded by crowding many, many people on foot into compact urban spaces. Milgram suggests that measuring walking speed in a variety of large cities, smaller towns, and villages could be instructive. He cites an unpublished study by William Berkowitz, who measured walking speeds in major US cities (Philadelphia, New York, Boston), and in smaller towns. Milgram cites Berkowitz as stating “There does appear to be a significant linear relationship between walking speed and size of municipality, but the absolute size of the difference varies by less than 10%” (p. 1467). This is the first mention I can find (in the scientific literature) examining if your walking speed differs, depending on the city that you are walking in. No further details are provided, sadly and regrettably. We are left, along with Milgram, pondering if this variation in walking speed arises simply because of the need to avoid other people when walking about in the city. People need to dart quickly here and there to avoid what otherwise would be unavoidable collisions. Of course, writers through the ages and our own anecdotal experience suggest that the pace of life does vary between small villages, medium-sized towns, and large cities. People leave the city to enjoy a slower pace of life, and go to the city in order to be stimulated by it (more details in Chapter Six of In Praise of Walking).

Some of my favourite urban walks are here (with pix!).

‘In Praise of Walking: The New Science of How We Walk, and Why it’s Good for Us’ (PenguinRandomHouse).

Selected as Book of the Month, August 2019 by argosybooks.ie and agreatread.co.uk);

Book of the Week: Sunday Independent

Walking upright on two feet is a uniquely human skill. It defines us as a species.

It enabled us to walk out of Africa and to spread as far as Alaska and Australia. It freed our hands and freed our minds. We put one foot in front of the other without thinking — yet how many of us know how we do that, or appreciate the advantages it gives us? In this hymn to walking, neuroscientist Shane O’Mara invites us to marvel at the benefits it confers on our bodies and minds.

In Praise of Walking celebrates this miraculous ability. Incredibly, it is a skill that has its evolutionary origins millions of years ago, under the sea. And the latest research is only now revealing how the brain and nervous system performs the mechanical magic of balancing, navigating a crowded city, or running our inner GPS system.

Walking is good for our muscles and posture; it helps to protect and repair organs, and can slow or turn back the ageing of our brains. With our minds in motion we think more creatively, our mood improves and stress levels fall. Walking together to achieve a shared purpose is also a social glue that has contributed to our survival as a species.

As our lives become increasingly sedentary, we risk all this. We must start walking again, whether it’s up a mountain, down to the park, or simply to school and work. We, and our societies, will be better for it.

Reviews

New Scientist: ‘’informative and persuasive enough to rouse the most ardent couch potato’

The Times: “Fascinating … O’Mara argues [walking] is intimately connected to our bodies, our brains, and ultimately how we exist as a species”

Sunday Times: “Convincing and compelling … In Praise of Walking is peppered with insights about everything from 19th-century poets and flaneurs to modern-day experiments with subjects playing video games in fMRI scanners”

Observer: “Walking makes us healthier, happier and brainier … [O’Mara] knows this not only through personal experience, but from cold, hard data”

Gina Rippon, author of The Gendered Brain: “Full of insights… an accessible and thought-provoking discussion of walking as a key to human success”

Harper’s Bazaar: “A fascinating new book that examines the multitudinous benefits of this form of locomotion”

[i] Milgram, S. (1970). The experience of living in cities. Science, 167(3924), 1461–1468 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1728966.pdf)

[ii] O’Mara, S.M. (2015). Why Torture Doesn’t Work: The Neuroscience Of Interrogation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.