The Physical Importance of Walking

Planners, urbanists and those who advocate for walkable neighborhoods have done a really good job of giving overarching reasons why we need to increase the amount of walkable neighborhoods in our cities. One of the more obvious reasons why we need to increase them is health.

While it seems obvious, more walkability means more healthy citizens, where they haven't done a good job is getting into the whys, though it is beyond the scope of what they do. So I wanted to get into some detail on that, just why more walking is better for everyone.

Our bodies receive fuel from two sources, fat and carbohydrates. At its basic, the body converts fat into the energy it needs to operate. As I sit here and type this, as you sit here and read this, our bodies are burning fat, just to stay alive, as well as the small amounts of energy required to carry out those duties. Now, not very much fat is burned, so you can't claim to be working out by sitting.

The thing about fat is that it requires a lot of oxygen to convert to energy. That's why as we sit here, we breathe. It is also why as we exert ourselves more, we breathe faster and heavier.

It is at this point that our body switches to the second energy source. Carbs are a short-term energy source that do not require near as much oxygen to convert to energy. They are also not stored in any large quantities. If you have ever seen a bike race, the most popular being the Tour de France, they are constantly eating. The reason is to keep the carbs supply high enough to operate efficiently.

We most associate physical activity and muscle use with increased breathing, but it can be other parts of the body. If a person is sitting out in the mid-August sun with no shade, their body may switch to carbs to operate the cooling system because it is having to work a lot harder and also keep the vital organs going. At that point, they will start to breath faster, even though they aren't moving.

Unlike carbs, fat is able to be stored in very large quantities, in some cases beyond a reasonable health level. But the average person doesn't need large amounts of carbs, so the human body developed a system to store the energy we need. At some point, the body will convert carbs to fat and store the energy for future use.

Now the point at which the body begins the switching to carbs varies, but generally speaking, the better physical shape a person is in, the longer it takes. In other words, a person in good shape can run longer before the body switches. It is also important to note that just because you start to breath faster, doesn't mean the body has started the switch. It just means it needs more oxygen right now. Someone who is huffing and puffing is virtually guaranteed to be burning carbs, but one who is at a slightly elevated breathing level is likely to still be burning fat, just more of it than normal.

This is where walking comes in. The average person burns between 50 to 100 calories if they walk for 10 minutes and most people minus the exceptionally out-of-shape would burn fat to fuel that walk. If we lived in more walkable areas, going to run minor errands would not only accomplish the task, but burn fat, since that is likely the fuel source used at low levels of exertion.

An extra ten minutes of walking a day, taken out over the course of a year, using a conservative 65 calories per walk, would burn a total of 23,725 calories. One pound of fat equals 3,500 calories, so walking an extra ten minutes a day would equate to a loss of almost seven pounds a year.

Now imagine if that came out of doing day-to-day things, instead of having to find the time to walk. Replacing neighborhoods that require a car with one where it is one of many options has a huge health benefit. Just living in a more walkable neighborhood, and changing a lifestyle to match the neighborhood, would slim the waistline tremendously.

Oil and Water or Parking at Rail Stations

The expanding rail system in Denver is undergoing a fundamental rethink of how it gets it passengers to its rail system as detailed by the Wall Street Journal. There are some very relevant parts for Dallas and DART in there.

Here's the fundamental parts:

After the system opened in 1994, planners built parking lots and garages around many of its stations to cater to commuters. That strategy put parking on land that would have been ideal for stores, apartment buildings and squares catering to riders living adjacent to the stops.

As a result, there has been little of that kind of development around the stations to change the area's car-dependent culture, and riders commute to the stations from up to 20 miles away.

"Once you put in a parking structure, it's difficult to move it," says Bill Sirois, senior planning manager at the Regional Transportation District in Denver.

Denver-transit planners now are becoming more flexible when it comes to how much parking they require near rail stops and where they put it.
In the continuing expansion of the Denver rail system—which will add up to 122 miles of light rail and commuter rail lines to the existing 35 miles within the next 10 years—land adjacent to stations will be earmarked in some cases for village-type developments.
...
Whether to cater primarily to commuters or to residents near rail stops is a pivotal question for mass-transit planners in some cities. Many western cities expanding relatively young rail systems don't have the density or "walkability" that has allowed residents in older, Eastern cities such as New York to eschew cars in favor of mass transit.


Still, some of Denver's peer cities already have embraced this approach. San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART, and the TriMet mass-transit system in Portland, Ore., long have favored relegating park-and-ride service to their farthest flung stations in the suburbs. Meanwhile, they encourage dense clusters of apartments, condominiums and offices adjacent to their urban rail stops. The twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., have taken a similar approach recently.
...
Critics ask whether Denver's change in approach on parking will chase some riders away rather than attract them. "So, they're going to make it more difficult to use transit in hopes that the real-estate speculators who use public money to build these things can flourish?" asks Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute, a think tank in Denver. A former board member of Denver's transit system, Mr. Caldara long has been among its most vocal critics.


This something I have espoused for a long time. Why would any system that wants to redesign the urban landscape surround the instruments that accomplish that feat with pedestrian-deadening surface parking lots and single-use garages? If the goal is to redo our transportation system from a car-based one to one that sees a greater tendency for walking and transit, why does it virtually require a car for its use?

This, I believe, is a reflection of a different generation. The older planning set, as well as almost all of the political spectrum, see cars as either indispensable or inevitable, neither of which is accurate.

I've said it before and it is relevant here. People will do what is convenient. Americans don't have a love affair with the car. They have a forced marriage. Nothing else is convenient. Look at it in this case, parking lots immediately surrounding stations. Any attempt at redesigning the urban environment around it will be blunted because the parking is taking up the space that the urban environment needs to thrive. We made the car more convenient. So if there is a development there, the impact of seperating the rail station from it with parking will lower the everyday use of the rail system from the development, as well as from people outside the area who might travel to the development.

There are other endless examples of this. A few weeks ago, I talked about how signal timing is a virtual impossibility in an urban area. But what is being timed, whether urban, suburban or rural? Autos, at the expense of everything else. Why aren't the signals timed for bikes? Walking? Buses? All of these have a different speed. By picking the car, we are picking our preference.

What happens when a street is widened? Property is taken to account for that space. What was that property. In an urban area, where most property is flush with the property line, it is sidewalks (in outer areas, it can also be private property). What is the message that is sent when we narrow sidewalks to widen space for cars. The autos have priority over pedestrians.

Speaking of sidewalks, how often do neighborhoods, even close-in ones, have sidewalks? Anything less than 100 percent is too low. Can you imagine a neighborhood without roads? Even rural, farming communities have at least dirt ones. What is that message that is sent that the only infrastructure that was built was to accommodate cars? Cars take priority over anything else.

From 1945-1990, virtually every city large and small built at least one freeway and almost always many more. In the meantime, city transit systems languished. Those that were able to continue were almost always a bus, stuck in traffic (and facing signals not timed for them, slowing them down even more). No new investments were made in transit except in isolated cases. It wasn't until the 1990's that there were multiple cities with concrete additions on the ground.

Reverting back to the topic, it is clear that even when our transit systems  were being designed, it was with the idea of the car first. In essence, we are investing in a transportation system not designed to be an alternative to the car, but rather shorten the distance cars make on each trip.

And the ironic part, is exactly what Bill Sirois touched on above. Unless we are talking surface lots, once these parking structures are in place, their stay is quite long, reducing not just the tendency to encourage alternative transportation now, but a long time into the future as well.

What Denver is doing in trying to encourage TOD's, what San Francisco did in allocating parking in the outlying areas is exactly what virtually every rail-building-transit agency should do. Why do the rail stations of Mockingbird, Park Lane, Victory (though the parking is not DART's property), Union (alos not DART's property) Market Center, Inwood, Bachman, 8th & Corinth, Illinois, MLK, Lawnview and White Rock Lake all have abundant parking? There are within five miles of Downtown Dallas, the first place that urbanism started in this area. Several are also near urban enclaves of varying degree. Now granted there are some urban stations, but more have parking than don't, even within Loop 12.

What critics like Jon Caldera fail to realize when they say things like without parking, it won't be used is that at some point, for that dynamic to change, there has to be a starting point. At some point, there will have to be a restriction of parking, there will have to a densification of the urban area.

It isn't because planners dislike cars, but rather out of every widespread transportation system there is, personal autos have the greatest amount of negative externalities, both public (pollution, health, cost, and land) and private (sedentary, cost, injury and death). If we know that, then why are cars put first above everything? It isn't because they are the most efficient or the most operable. New York City and the rest of the Alpha World Class Cities are proof of that. In NYC, walking is the most used transportation form, followed by transit. Cars are third. I'm not saying every city has to be the equivalent, but it would be better than what Dallas achieves, an 87 percent single use occupancy.

For DART, it has to achieve better than 32 stations out of 55 that are commuter-based, or 58 percent. If the the Downtown Dallas rail stations are removed, the percentage is raised to almost two-thirds. The Orange Line opens Monday and I don't know its numbers off the top of my head, though I believe only the Las Colinas Station serves the neighborhood, though the University of Dallas Station may too.

Where are the walkable neighborhoods? Where are the bus transfers? Where is the actual ability to live car-free? All these were promised during DART's referendum to form the agency in the 1980's. While there is a lot that the rail system lacks that is outside DART's control, this is something that could help the system that they have direct control over. In the end, they have to ask themselves do they want a transit system that serves the future of Dallas, or one that was built for the 1980's Dallas.

Are Kids the Urban Canary in the Coal Mine?

I have touched on the idea of kids, cities and suburbs are few times, and shall revisit that here, thanks to an article I read in the Salon, written by Will Doig.

In the past, I have said that urban design can make it dangerous for kids to walk on their own. This article looks at the issue from a different approach. In essence, by not allowing kids to walk, we are suppressing urban life, something that is essential to a vibrant streetscape.

That a kindergartner was allowed to toddle four blocks without adult supervision seems extraordinary now, even though cities are at least as safe for children today as they were then. Crime is at a 40-year low. The percentage of kids fatally hit by cars has been dropping for decades. And the child abductors that leer from every corner are tabloid fantasy — only about 100 kids, out of tens of millions, are kidnapped in public by a stranger each year.

So naturally, children can now be found romping unsupervised throughout our neighborhoods, acquiring the intuition, resourcefulness and sense of independence that such a childhood provides, right?

Actually, no. In the time since [Lenore] Skenazy walked off to kindergarten alone, the number of children that can be found in public without supervision has only diminished. In one survey, 85 percent of mothers said they allowed their kids outside unsupervised less frequently than they themselves were allowed. In Britain, the average age of children allowed to play outside adult-free has risen by more than a year since the ’70s, and 25 percent of 8- to 10-year-olds have never played outside without an adult. One study diagrammed the shrinking distances that four generations of one family’s kids were allowed to stray from home: six miles in 1919, one mile in 1950, half a mile in 1979, and 300 yards today.

 I think this is what it boils down to when parents think about this. We all want our kids to be safe. Yet, we always revert to the lowest common denominator. When they are infants, we have baby monitors or video feeds to make sure they are safe when they move to their on room, away from parental supervision. Play dates weren't "invented" 20 years ago, because we just naturally let our kids go out and play...by themselves or to their friends. Even things that I can remember doing as a kid (I am just 32) aren't allowed anymore by lots of parents. I remember the first freedom I felt when I got my own bike and was allowed to roam the neighborhood alone or with friends or sister. My parents said what to watch out for and what to do and let me be on my way. And you know what? I did it. I believe to often we think kids don't have the ability to follow instructions when it matters, but they do. We did.

I think that may be more of the crux of this issue. Trust. Either we don't trust our kids or don't trust other people.

That also comes into part of what good urban areas build, a community trust. Seeing the same people, eventually socializing with them builds social capital. When you see the same folks, an informal relationship builds. Even seeing the same type of people tears down walls. In an area that is car-oriented, those things aren't possible. People aren't out socializing, they are in their own private sphere. People there just aren't able to do the same things in suburbs that they can in quality urban areas.

My son, in a few years, will be able to walk to the convenience store a block away. Folks in the suburbs can't, because it is a mile or more and the streets may or may not have sidewalks, but a certainly border thoroughfares that are a minimum of six lanes, straight and at least 40 miles per hour and usually more.

However, until now, I never thought of the urban area's health and vitality in terms of children walkability. 

She travels the globe preaching the gospel of less-protective parenting and hosts an annual event called “Take Our Children to the Park and Leave Them There,” which is exactly what it sounds like. It’s not just for the kids’ sake: Skenazy believes that free-roaming children are an integral part of what makes a good city. “When you’re talking child-friendly, you’re usually talking about the same things urban planners talk about: mixed-use, people outside, a rhythm to the streets.”

She says the “Popsicle test” is a convenient way to use free-roaming kids to gauge a city’s health. “If an 8-year-old child can go get a Popsicle from the store by themselves and finish it before they get home, that city is probably thriving,” says Skenazy. Such an act is possible only in a walkable, reasonably safe environment that has a good pedestrian infrastructure and where retail and residences are relatively intermixed.

 As it happens, this is exactly the type of environment that’s proliferating in many cities. So why has kids’ freedom to roam only faltered? Overprotective parenting is, of course, the culprit that first springs to mind. “We’ve come around to the idea that parenting is a skill,” says psychologist Alex Russell. “We’re now all aware that those early years are extremely formative.” But another reason, says Russell, “is that we are parenting more and more in isolation. Parents used to parent in communities, but now it falls squarely on the mother and father.”

This, I think, is a direct result of suburbanization. This village parenting idea has existed for centuries and more. The phrase it takes a village is quite old, but no longer applies to our country's society. Low-density, car-oriented design has spread families apart and isolated us from our neighbors. Add in the mistrust that isolation brings and it is no wonder kids aren't allowed to be kids. 

Cities reinforce this paradigm with ever more creative ways of banning unsupervised kids, even though the definition of “unsupervised” depends on one’s perspective. As Russell suggests, kids can be supervised in the absence of their parents. In the Sydney Morning Herald, a writer recently marveled at seeing children wandering unchaperoned all over Tokyo. When she worried to her Japanese colleague about the lack of adult supervision, he responded, “What do you mean, no adults? There were the car drivers, the shopkeepers, the other pedestrians.” In Japan, 80 percent of kids between 6 and 12 walk to school grownup-free.

I have always marveled at the Japanese urban design. Now there are obvious cultural differences, but they build cities in the way that I preach here. There is a great appreciation for social bonds and responsibilities there.

In some ways, I don't think it is that much different here, only the design. Here's what I mean. If I am walking down the street and I see a kid, I watch the kid, even if only casually. If something bad were to happen, like an abduction, theft or just a crying kid, I intervene. Surely, there isn't that many who wouldn't. Yet here, we first think the parents are bad.

And it also takes a step for the parent too. In my personal experience, it can be hard to give them that freedom that isn't 100% secure or safe. But I see an independence streak in him that I had. And I am already seeing the parental and developmental benefits of giving him freedom to make choices.

Part of this is simple geography — Americans are more spread out than the Japanese. Sixty percent of Americans lived within two miles of their children’s schools in 1969. Now, 40 percent do. This helps explain why, in 1969, walking or biking was the most common way of getting to school, according to a UCLA study. Today, only about 13 percent of kids get to school that way.

BTW, we also had a childhood obesity epidemic. Coincidence? Certainly not in part. A lot of blame goes to video games or staying indoors, but now allowing them to walk for everyday needs may be the biggest change that requires the smallest change.

Also, if people say kids don't get enough outdoor play time, but they aren't allowed to go outside on their own, is it a shock they aren't getting enough active play time?

Once again, I think suburbanization plays a part. Some people have expressed their opinions that I am making a bad decision by not moving to a single-family house with a backyard. I just don't think that is necessary. When you realize that humans survived centuries upon centuries without backyards, it does seem weird that a relatively recent invention is considered an absolute necessity for childhood development.

“It’s almost a suburbanization of cities,” says Skenazy. “The idea that we should keep kids in cars and hover at the park and be with them 24/7 — it started in the suburbs and became the norm for parenting.”

Exactly right. When suburbs are all you know, and when you have a city like Dallas that tries to emulate suburban design, it is no wonder the current generation doesn't know anything but the suburbs.

[Nancy] Pullen-Seufert gets this, and I imagine that when she’s not talking to a reporter, she’s just as openly frustrated with parents’ irrational fears as Lenore Skenazy is. “Sometimes what we hear from [parents] is, ‘Look, my job is to protect my kid, and if this is one less thing I can expose them to, great, let’s mark it off the list,’” she says. “For a while some organizations tried to convince parents by saying, ‘Take the longer-range look: This is a way to build physical activity into your kid’s day.’ And some parents bought that, but a lot of others just said they could get the physical activity in other ways.”

I'd even take it a step further. Yes the physical activity is important, but what does this do for kid's mental development? What happens when a teen finally has freedom they never had before? What happens when a helicopter parent stays in their kids life and directs their children, even when they are in college and beyond?

It is a fact that the human brain develops most of its lifelong functions before ten. If kids don't know how to handle freedom and responsibility before that process finishes, then they will struggle with it for the rest of their lives.

It says something that we perceive walking down the street to be a greater risk to kids than speeding along in two tons of steel and glass, when in actuality, four-fifths of kids killed by cars are in those cars. No parent, however, is going to be accused of endangering their child by driving them to school, but the parent who lets them walk might be — the fear of being judged by other parents looms large. As does the fear of liability on the part of these schools and cities. “Our belief in our communities has been eroded by fears of lawsuits, insurance companies whaling on the schools, the constant din of horror story tonight at 6,” says Skenazy.

This is what gets at the heart of the matter for me. This is the oxymoron of suburban development. We want to make our kids safer, yet the thing that makes that perceived safety possible, is actually the biggest threat of all. The number one killer of humans between the age of 2 and 19 is the car. Nothing kills our kids more, not disease, not inner city violence, not bullying and certainly not walking outside but ferrying our kids around in the car. But we never hear of the dangers of that, at least not on any large scale. But we do hear about the more rarer incidents like abductions, and then paradoxically, we keep them more isolated and more dependent upon the car.

And in the end, Salon notes, when we think of kids in the design of our cities, everyone wins.

And seeing kids outside can give people confidence in their city, too. It can make them think twice about speeding in their cars and help old people age in place (kid- and senior-friendly infrastructures are often one and the same). “There’s this intangible piece to it,” says Pullen-Seufert, when asked what makes a true safe route for a child. “It’s an overall community feel, where people just feel comfortable being out there.”

I shudder to think of what cost suburbanization will have on the baby boomers. Once their capacity to drive has diminished to the point of dangerous for themselves and society, it is either nursing home or extreme isolation. Neither sounds pleasant. Cities with a greater degree of walkability will certainly have the edge, both for their citizens personal benefits and socially as a whole.

Just what is Walkable?

Walk score is a website that made the planning rounds when it was introduced a few years ago and despite its oversimplisticness, has been at least a decent tool for determining how decent neighborhoods are at achieving a car alternative. They have added a new feature that gauges transit. How it works, I don't know, but I wanted to post the transit link for two reasons. The first, illustrates just how poor Dallas ranks. Here's the top 10.

Portland, OR (Transit Score: 50)
Baltimore, MD (57)
Miami, FL (57)
Seattle, WA (59)
Chicago, IL (65)
Philadelphia, PA (68)
Washington, D.C. (69)
Boston, MA (74)
San Francisco, CA (80)
New York, NY (81)

Dallas has a score of 39. The heat map, found here, is pretty clear, transit and walking are very hard in Dallas.

The second reason I post this is that when playing around with the heat maps, I found again just how goofy stats can be. For example, the Oak Lawn area includes Uptown (highly walkable), Oak Lawn, very walkable) and an area west of the tollway (unwalkable). By combining all three, they have made a mediocre walkable score.

Of course, this also goes with its main detraction, that being near things isn't always walkable. If I lived on one side of the street and everything was across an intersection with 7 lanes and a median on both roadways, I may want to reconsider walking. Cedar Springs from two posts ago is another example.

Anyway, have fun with the time-wasting map!