Study after study shows that walking is very good for those who are able, and generally more is better.
Study after study shows that walking is very good for those who are able, and generally more is better. A 2023 study found that even 4,000 steps a day improves all-cause mortality risk. (The U.S average is 4,000 to 5,000.) For each 1,000 extra daily steps, risk decreased by 15%.
Walk Scores have been used since 2007 to quantify how quickly people can typically walk to amenities like grocery stores and schools in an area. Cities are assigned scores from 0 to 100; for instance, Seattle’s 74 means it’s “very walkable.” It may seem self-evident that in cities and towns with better scores people tend to walk more. But it’s surprisingly difficult to tease out the cause and effect: Do walkable cities prompt people to take more steps, or do people who want to walk tend to live in more pedestrian-friendly cities?
New research led by the University of Washington provides clear evidence that highly walkable areas lead to significantly more walking. Using data from the Argus step-tracking app, authors compared the steps per day of 5,424 people who moved one or more times among 1,609 cities in the United States. Across all relocations, when the Walk Score rose or fell more than 48 points, average steps increased or decreased by about 1,100 per day. But when people moved between similarly walkable cities, their steps stayed about the same. These findings held across people of different ages, genders and body mass indexes.
Read More: University of Washington
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