Excellent thread about the benefits of cities that are not built around cars

Having recently taken a trip to NYC; this is so true. I got more exercise than I normally ever do, felt great, and never once thought about traffic. Walkable cities are amazing.

Walkable and bikeable, please. While it is nice to be able to exercise and explore, sometimes I just need to transport a few bags worth of groceries, and carrying bags for over an hour is not fun.
I'll take a bike and some pannier bags please.

carrying bags for over an hour is not fun.
I hate to break it to you, but if you have to walk an hour to buy groceries you’re not living in a walkable city.
If it's an hour to the grocery store I don't think that's walkable either
- an hour to walk to the grocery store is about 10 minutes on a bike. Just get a backpack to carry things.
A walkable city means everything, including the grocery store, is a conveniently walkable distance away, which would automatically make it bikeable, too. An hour's walk to the grocery store does not a walkable city make.
I feel it's hard to find places which are walkable but not bikeable (outside of the USA)
A walkable grocery store is at max a 10-15 mins from the house (in my opinion). This allows you to just pop in and buy stuff while coming from the public transport stop without having to schedule big trips for the entire week/month.
- i feel like there's a general tendency for people to mean different things when they say "bike", some people think dutch-style cycling where high gears are something you use when you're late for school, other people think more like road biking where low gears are something you begrudgingly resort to when you encounter a steep incline.
  slow cycling is perfectly compatible with pedestrian places so long as it isn't like a medieval alleyway, but fast biking is going to end up with people getting bruises.

Text:

Walkable cities sneak exercise into daily life. Coffee runs, grocery trips and commutes turn into steps that boost dopamine, mood and energy.
Car dependent cities keep you parked in traffic and at desks, fuelling sedentary habits linked to depression and cognitive decline.
Walkable cities invite chance encounters. Smiles on sidewalks, quick chats with neighbours and local shop hellos build connection and fight loneliness.
Car dependent cities keep people alone in cars and homes where isolation quietly chips away at mental well being.
Walkable cities give you options to stroll, bike or take transit. Less car dependence means less traffic stress, more freedom and calmer mornings.
Car dependent cities lock you into unpredictable commutes, noise and road rage that spike cortisol and strain mental health daily
Walkable cities weave green parks and trees into everyday life. Nature exposure lowers stress, improves focus and lifts mood.
Car dependent cities replace trees with asphalt and noise, pumping out pollution that can worsen anxiety, irritability and cognitive performance.
Walkable cities naturally promote activity, connection, calm & nature which are all protectors of mental health.
Car dependent cities lead to more isolation, stress & less movement.
How we build cities is not just transport planning. It needs to consider mental health planning.

Yes but also a walkable city has to be a sitable city! I'm not about to enforce extra unneeded walk time under the climate change summer sun to an elderly person who enjoys the pleasure of irreversible knee damage that the state did not want to solve nor even palliate.

Yes, there will be plenty of place for outdoor seating space and shade from trees and water and stuff once there no cars in the cities (and countries). Also good public transport if it's a bad knee day.
- I was staying near Austin, tx a while back. We wanted to get some fast food at like 2am, so we chartered a shuttle for like $5 for a round trip to a 24hr joint. And we probably could have walked! Its insane what good public transport can do.

Live in a highly walkable city; can confirm.

Twitter is such shit. who types that much with character limits. can't even be bothered to read that broken mess of posts

I still sometimes ask myself what was wrong with the web forum that it needed to be replaced by modern "social media" formats...
- Corporate profits and control of speech, obviously!
  /sarcasm
- I'd say too sparse and no user friendly mobile app. Having your friends all in the same place and being able to join them just by downloading an app using an already available store on your phone does wonders

Pretty sure walkable cities also have desks, but the rest is solid.

Sure, but walking/biking to the local rapid station to then walk to your job is much better than taking 24 steps from your home to your car. And then if you decide to go out for lunch at work, you can walk a block over to a cafe or deli and then walk back. If you have a local produce shop that's a 15 minute walk from your home, you will likely prefer walking out there 3 times a week for groceries than driving out to a grocery shop once a week. Lots of little walks and rides add up to make you much healthier than the sedentary lifestyle encouraged by suburban life.
- I agreed with everything else, just found the inclusion of desks to be silly.
- Leaving my house which has a desk and Internet connection to go to a place with a desk and an Internet connection sounds ridiculous.
Nope, in walkable cities all desks have little treadmills under them.

What are top five best walkable cities in the US that are also affordable?

They're not affordable, sadly. Walkable cities are so amazingly great that people will pay a lot of money to live in them. And they have to, because the demand is huge, but they're illegal to build, so the supply is tiny.
In short, Americans are dumb.
I'm not sure I could name 5, period
- What I was afraid of. Walkable cities is a great a noble thing. It just sucks we aren't making those in America.
bear in mind that american "cities" are basically small countries, i'm sure there's at least a hundred "towns" or districts of "cities" that are walkable and affordable, but the "cities" are so stupid huge that they have a bunch of variation in them.
Pennsylvania's got you covered with Pittsburgh and Philly.
Pittsburgh has great walking but its transit is quite limited. Philly has good transit (for USA).
Both very affordable compared to other cities.
Chicago is pretty similar to Philly in terms of affordability, walkability and transit.
Chicago is really affordable for its size IMO. At least comparatively I guess.

Trying to decide if these could have data backing them up. Clearly if you look at people who walk/bike to work in our current cities, they will be healthier. But I would assume this is a selection effect? And probably not much less lonely? I was under the impression that loneliness was high everywhere.

Curious if transit systems really are more reliable than the typical car commute. I've certainly had missed connections, bus breakdowns, and people jumping in front of trains.

And I didn't follow why a walkable city will have more green spaces. Surely in a capitalism we'll still have strong pressure to fill most of that.

And I didn't follow why a walkable city will have more green spaces. Surely in a capitalism we'll still have strong pressure to fill most of that.
Well yes, but a walkable city is already something that doesn't really align with hardcore capitalism. And if your goal is a walkable city, then you need to make it enjoyable. Most people don't enjoy walking through endless grey.
Although yes, in Europe, city leaderships that care about that are usually on the left side of the political spectrum.
Point is, a walkable city has no advantage to capitalism. So it's a safe assumption that a leadership pushing for it is not really that capitalist.
It's not really a "walkable" city if you are getting ass-blastes by the sun in the middle of summer. My small town is definitely a walkable city and has trees lining pretty much every street since something has ro go between the road and the sidewalk.
Trees are ideal because they:
Will stop a car dead in its tracks if it drifts towards the sidewalk Produce shade to keep the surrounding area cool Are natural sound insulation (my town is on a busy cargo rail line and i never hear trains in the summer, but hear them frequently in the winter when the trees are bare) reduce pollution and increase air quality
Any town that is trying to become more walkable will put trees everywhere they are a cheap and easy way to make everything more pleasant.
- The most walkable place I've lived in had pretty sparse greenery (to be fair, it was quite north). Shade from the sun comes from the residential and commercial buildings stacked high, with relatively narrow streets and alleyways.
  I agree trees are great. Just not obvious to me that more walkable designs necessarily include them.
It's very difficult to take these questions/criticisms seriously when I live this everyday
- That's great! I'm imagining a data-is-beautiful chart showing the positives. Do you have/know of data on them from your neighborhood/town?

Well, when you put it that way

Thank you for sharing.

Wish I could invite twice

Yes, nice thread with so many different people and opinions in it. Very nice, indeed.

This sentiment is great, but I have 2 dogs, and play loud drums, and have loud dirt bikes...neighbors would hate me.

Walkable towns / cities doesn't have to be high density housing, just means you need actual sidewalks and public transportation.
- Oh, i see! I do wish I had a bike trail near me. Damn impossible to bike without about getting ran over.
On the metro in my city, the dogs are better behaved than the humans, and the drummers get tips. You could just ride your dirt bike to places instead of transporting it on a truck.
so long as you're willing to pay the actual cost of such a lifestyle, but unfortunately you're almost certainly not doing so, because if you did you'd be complaining about how expensive it is.
- I have enough as it is. I'm just trying to put in perspective why some people see this as unlivable conditions for them. You can't put an outdoorsy family of 5 in a tiny apartment.
I agree. But for me is to have many more options around walking cities, but they should not forced to everyone.

Look, I do like living in a pedestrian-only street in a town you can easily work across and being in a car maybe a handful of times a year.

But please spare me the terminally online health guru pitch. Every part of that post sounds atrocious to me. The exoticization alone makes me want to move back to a major city. I don't go to the shop next door for smiles and chance encounters, I go because they have the nice cookies. I don't go at all if I can help it because pants are still evil in "walkable cities". Do please get off it.

If you go to the same bakery once a week, you eventually start recognizing people, and people there recognize you. You aren't goin to a shop to meet people, it's just a happy side effect of having a regular routine like that. When you keep seeing the same person over and over again, you may end up wearing a shirt that they like and it becomes a conversation and you have a new connection to your community. Walkable communities encourage relationship building of various types while car dependency forces us into social isolation.
- I can tell I'm going to have a hard time explaining why that little narrative you constructed rubs me the wrong way, but I'll give it a shot.
  Yeah, I absolutely talk to the same people every day or week, but it's not some special little mental health break I get, it's just how stuff works. The chances of that being a nice bit of social interaction you like or an oppressive thing that makes you feel trapped or socially awkward are about 50-50, and seeing people from other backgrounds or environments romanticise it feels kinda patronizing or... touristy? Touristy is a word.
  Does that make sense? Living in a small place or a place where you walk to your daily errands isn't magic or a whimsical simple life, it's just how stuff works in some living arrangements, and it has upsides and downsides. Car-first cities suck and I wouldn't move to one, but it's not because I live in some endless episode of Cheers that's keeping me mentally healthy.
Dunno why you're so cranky. OP is absolutely spot on with this post. Maybe you should ditch your commute..you'd probably be happier. ;)
- I don't have a commute. I don't have a car, or even a license. I push a shopping cart to the supermarket and back, three of which are within a block of my house. I buy fresh produce every day from a small shop and I haven't been to a chain restaurant in months.
  If anything the cranky should be proof that all that chance encountering and accidental smiling the touristy OP talks about won't make you any nicer.
Name checks out.