what to expect: a conversation of walkable cities in the united states, a discussion of cities in general, and the benefits of walkability
July 1st marks my first year of living in Philadelphia.
Before Philly, I spent my childhood in the suburbs, with occasional trips into Boston. You drove to see friends, to get to the store, or to get to school. Some of my friends lived a 25 minute drive, which then felt like nothing. I went to college in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The city is walkable, but I always felt that neighborhoods were split up by major roadways or heavy traffic. I had a car to easily travel to activities, friends, and my part-time job.
Now within Philadelphia, I only walk or take public transit. I have grown accustomed to a completely new lifestyle without fully realizing it. I had never really thought about how different life became, until I went to Dallas for work. Dallas had it’s charm, it had great food, kind people, and some great spots to go with friends. However, there was not one thing during my week in both Plano and Dallas that I could access on my own two feet. After 5, 10, 15 ubers were ordered, I thought to myself, I have spent more time in a car in the last few days than I have in the past few weeks, even months, in Philly.
It was one of those moments, like in the gym, when you don’t see your progress day to day, until you see a photo of yourself from months before. I grew up loving to drive. I still think fondly of the rides with my friends, with the windows down and music so loud that today I would wince. I remember thinking I would never live in a city. I loved driving with my friends, I appreciated the convenience and the independence. I realized I didn’t necessarily love driving, it was that my lifestyle required it. Like any city, Philadelphia has it’s issues. But I am forever thankful that I have been introduced into the lifestyle that comes with walkability.
Walkable Cities as a Campaign Promise
The former Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, ran for re-election in 2020 with aims of making Paris a 15-minute city. The term, originally coined by Carlos Moreno, a professor at the Paris Sorbonne Business School, was a simple concept: build cities that people can walk, bike, or public transport within 15 minutes to all essential services (Gongadze et al. 2023) Mayor Hidalgo had initiatives around this idea, so that Parisians could have a better quality of life, while being climate-conscious. Her plans involved removed 60,000 parking spots, prioritizing bike lanes, and promoting local business (Speck YEAR).
After she was elected, the city transformed. By 2023, the city had 1,000 kms (621 miles) of biking routes (Gongadze et al. 2023). The city wanted to establish local community spaces for the neighborhoods, with nurseries and open school yards open on the weekend (Gongadze et al. 2023). This would spark conversations and urban redevelopement across the globe.
Jeff Speck is an American city planner, writer, and global advocate for walkable cities. With a Masters of Architecture from Harvard and Masters of Fine Arts from Syracuse University, he has co-authored “Suburban Nation,” that explores post-WWII suburban development that led to negative outcomes for the US :isolation, traffic, environmental issues, etc. During a TED talk with host Manoush Zomordori, titled: How can more U.S. cities become more walkable? Here’s one urban planner’s approach,” Speck spoke of the benefits of a walkable city. He led discussing Paris and Anne, and continued into how Portland, Oregon is a model for walkability for the United States. “Portland made a bunch of decisions in the 1970s that began to distinguish it from almost every other American city” (Speck 4:15). Portland used a “skinny streets program”, an urban planning approach where streets are created intentionally narrower. While other cities created large roads and highways, Portland invested in walking and biking infrastructure. They spent $60 million on bike facilities over 30 years. The impact, according to Speck, is the average person drives 20% less than the rest of the country, with their vehicle miles traveled per day peaking in 1996 and dropping ever since.
Other cities in the United States are attempting to become more walkable, but this is no small feat. You need budget, leadership willingness to make the change, and a large shift in behavior. As Speck explains there is criteria for people to desire walking over driving: usefulness, safety, comfortability, and interesting.
Usefulness: Is there housing downtown in the city? Are the offices and job opportunities walking distance from housing? Creating a mixed-used district.
Safety: Infrastructure, highway design and city design (think bike lanes, side walks, accessbility).
Comfortable: Speck introduced both the concept of spatial definition and prospect refuge. Spatial definition is … Prospect refuge is the desire to see threats and feel safe from attack.
Interesting: are there doors/windows into businesses and sight into human activity, parks and recreational facilities. Humans are social primates, “nothing interests us more than other humans” (Speck).
The Love of the Car
The behavior shift is not simple, Americans love their cars. The size of the average car is growing at a rate of 1 cm every two years (Transport & Environment 2024). People are increasingly buying sport utility vehicles (SUVs) and light truck vehicles (LTVs) that have higher and blunter front ends that make them more dangerous. One meta-study found that if an adult pedestrian was struck by an SUV, they were 44% more likely to be killed than if the vehicle was a smaller car. For children, it rose 82% higher. Read more about the shift in car size and its implications here.
It is hard to say whether people truly prefer their cars, or how much of it is due to always being car dependent. Car dependency has become an American norm, in 2021, 91.7% of American households own at least one car and 80% of people feel they have no other option but to use a car (Stahl 2025). The problem is more than just the cars, it is that we have designed our society around them.
Providing proper public transit allows for increased accessibility across the city, while also providing alternatives that produce less emissions. It needs to be frequent, reliable, and easy to use for people to use as an alternative to automotive travel. Only 1.5% of total trips taken in the US are on buses or trains (Bureau of Transportation Statistics, 2026).
One article titled “How car-loving American cities fell so far behind their global peers on public transit” written by Oliver Milman, explored American cities transportation. There is a need for public transit in order to have walkable cities. Milman introduced one study by Transportation for America, that compared Transit vehicles per 100k inhabitants against the cities population. This was plotted and displayed with the world-class average included, as well as the United States average as benchmarks. See the image here.
The United States has fallen behind cities around the world where people can rely on extensive, high-quality public transport to get around.
Oliver Milman
Cities as Engines of Innovation & Opportunity
In the 1950s, interstate highways began to cut through major cities and prioritized ease for drivers. The roads spread throughout the country and “plowed into the heart of cities, severing communities, and attracting traffic, prompting the widening of these highways, which then spurs even more traffic” (Milman 2026).
Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson wrote and published Abundance in March of 2025. The book explores America’s primary problems, going into topics such as the housing crisis, climate change, and the lack of wage growth. In chapter one, Klein and Thompson specifically discuss how cities should be “where wealth is created, not where wealth is displayed.” But cities have become unlivable with “super star cities” or cities that drive the economy, requiring people to commute for hours just to work there. New York City has become a high-end or luxury product. One economist, Ed Glaeser with Harvard University published research about how New York City wages in the 1980s were unusually high compared to cost of living, meaning people benefited from moving to the city. However, after 2000, moving to New York City meant taking a “pay-cut,” as it has become so expensive to live there. Klein and Thompson argue that cities have stopped working as engines of economic mobility for the average American.
They continued to discuss just how important cities are, from Ed Glaeser’s book Triumph of the City (2011), “Americans who live in metropolitan areas with more than a million residents are, on average, more than 50 percent more productive than Americans who live in smaller metropolitan areas.” This statistic held true even when controlling for education and skills. Cities form communities of interest and industry, which are hard to replicate. Thomson and Klein summarize the idea well when they wrote, “Why not build your AI behemoth somewhere nice to live like Maui or Bali…In theory this arrangement should be possible anywhere. In practice the frontier of ideas is best breached by people who know each other well and work with each other closely, and move between different companies with different cultures and specialities smoothly” (Klein and Thompson 2025). Companies and jobs will continue to place their offices in the places that have the talent and knowledge they seek.
As cities become more expensive, people are only able to move to the city comfortable if they have lucrative jobs with high-salaries. With two thirds of jobs in the American economy being the local service sector (think nurses, hair stylists, or real estate agents for example), people are unable to try other jobs as easily. This decreases upward mobility, as people are forced to stay in a location with less opportunity, or as Klein and Thompson refer to it as an “economically stagnant zip code” (2025). Further, workers with lower salaries are being forced to move out of the city, which pushes them out of areas with different opportunities. This perpetuates income inequality, as people are pushed further from higher paying job opportunities. Proximity is important, because networking and exposure is important. In Klein and Thompson’s words, people are products of place. With the shift of lower income people being forced out of cities people are forced to live in even less accessible and walkable areas.
The Benefits of a Walkable City
The most obvious benefit to a walkable city is physical health. I have experienced first hand the benefits of a lifestyle built around walking. I don’t have a car, so it is built into my day to day. It is built naturally into my day, for groceries, appointments, or to see friends. In the suburbs, It is built into my day to day, walking to the grocery store, to see friends, or to doctors appointments. When I first began to track my steps, when I was in the suburbs my steps came from a conscious effort to get them during my day. Walking in the city provides easy movement into a persons day. One study of California cities found that walkable cities were correlated with lower obesity, diabetes, asthma, and heart disease (Piatkowski & Garrick 2015). As physical activity is a critical determinant for health and well-being, having a lifestyle that involves walking provides benefits to residents.
One study led by a cross-disciplinary team of Stanford researchers found that a cities walkability impacts the physical activity levels regardless of individual demographics or habits. They used date from 5,400 Americans who relocated between cities with varying walking scores. They found that those who moved to more walkable cities walked on average 1,100 steps more per day. This showed that people, regardless of how active they were already, have shifts in physical behavior (Hamilton 2025). Walking has significant benefits, with numerous studies as evidence.
Cities that prioritize walking over driving will reduce carbon emissions. Shifting from cars to public transportation and walking can reduce up to 2 tons of carbon emissions annually per individual (United Nations, n.d).1
Additionally, walking makes me interact more with my community. Rather than taking a car to and from work, I take the train. Walking to the train and in the station, I run into various people in the city or who I work with. Being around people leads to more social interactions throughout my day. By walking, I have more time spent outdoors, especially being in a city with ample parks and walking trails. Within walking distance there are countless local businesses, stores, coffee shops, and new food. I am able to explore various neighborhoods and have a naturally active lifestyle. With the city at my fingertips, new people and experiences are too.
works cited
Bureau of Transportation Statistics. (2026). Chapter 2: Passenger travel. U.S. Department of Transportation. https://data.bts.gov/stories/s/Chapter-2-Passenger-Travel/3t3v-vpmv
Glaeser, E. L. (2005). Urban colossus: Why is New York America’s largest city? (Working Paper No. WP05-05). Taubman Center for State and Local Government, Harvard Kennedy School. https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/taubman/files/Glaeser_05_Colossus.pdf
Glaeser, E. L. (2011). Triumph of the city: How our greatest invention makes us richer, smarter, greener, healthier, and happier. Penguin Press.
Gongadze, S., & Maassen, A. (2023, January 25). Paris’ vision for a ’15-minute city’ sparks a global movement. World Resources Institute. https://www.wri.org/insights/paris-15-minute-city
Hamilton, K. (2025, August 13). Walkable cities boost daily activity by an average of 1,100 steps. Stanford Report. https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2025/08/walkable-cities-walk-score-daily-movement-steps-research
Milman, O. (2026, May 6). How car-loving American cities fell so far behind their global peers on public transit. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/may/06/american-cities-cars-public-transportation
Piatkowski, D., & Garrick, N. (2015). Community design, street networks, and public health. Journal of Transport & Health, 1(4), 326–340. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jth.2014.06.002
Ray, J., Fleming, B., Higashide, S., Mangan, E., Lample, K., Lillehei, X., Noisecat, J., McElwee, S., & Aldana Cohen, D. (2020, March). Voters want a better transit system for America. Data for Progress; Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology; Transportation for America; TransitCenter; Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative. https://www.filesforprogress.org/memos/gnd-for-transit-polling.pdf
Stahl, M. (2025, January 30). Explainer series #11: Car dependency. Sustainable Princeton. https://www.sustainableprinceton.org/explainer-series-11-car-dependency/
Transport & Environment. (2024, January 22). Ever-wider: Why large SUVs don’t fit, and what to do about it. https://www.transportenvironment.org/articles/ever-wider-why-large-suvs-dont-fit-and-what-to-do-about-it
United Nations. (n.d.). Your guide to climate action: Transport. Act Now. Retrieved July 19, 2026, from https://www.un.org/en/actnow/transport
Walker, P. (2026, June 20). SUV buyers undeterred by warning ricks of pedestrians, UK study finds. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/20/suv-risks-warnings-road-safety-buyers-uk-study
Zomorodi, M. (Host). (2024, March 22). How can more U.S. cities become more walkable? Here’s one urban planner’s approach [Radio broadcast transcript]. NPR. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1239552997
Additional Information
Health Benefits to Walkking
Harvard Health Publishing. (2023, December 7). 5 surprising benefits of walking. Harvard Health. https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthy-aging-and-longevity/5-surprising-benefits-of-walking
Ungvari, Z., Fazekas-Pongor, V., Csiszar, A., & Kunutsor, S. K. (2023). The multifaceted benefits of walking for healthy aging: From Blue Zones to molecular mechanisms. GeroScience, 45(6), 3211–3239. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-023-00873-8
mfour 
Leave a comment