Walking: A Community's Wonder Drug to Health Outcomes

Walkable neighbourhoods reduce pedestrian injuries and save lives. Drivers learn to share the road with walkers. Streets filled with people have less crime and vandalism.
Walking replaces short polluting car trips, improves local air quality, reduces congestion, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions. Because every transit trip begins and ends with a walk, walkability improves transit success.
Property values are higher in walkable neighbourhoods. Stores sell more thanks to increased foot traffic. Employers like walkable locations in order to attract young, creative employees. Tourists love walkability. Everybody does.
As the population ages, walkable communities help people remain at home, get access to essential services, and stay connected. Walkability provides similar benefits to others who do not drive, including children, people with disabilities, and those who can’t afford the high cost of owning and operating a vehicle. Walkable neighbourhoods are for everybody.
Walking improves mood and concentration, boosts mental agility, and fights depression. Walkability promotes “sustainable happiness.”
Walkability promotes routine contact with others in your neighbourhood, encouraging a sense of belonging, pride, and community participation. The street is the original social network – a community of place.

1.  The risk of obesity goes down by 5% for every kilometre walked daily.
2.   Daily walking also reduces the risk of dementia and cancer. 
3.   More people get required activity in walkable neighbourhoods.  

A good community is one where people who live there feel they have a personal stake in how well it operates, offering a rewarding personal lifestyle for those of all ages and walks of life in the services provided and the general atmosphere of a society with a shared social contract. In Canada, the universal health care system tends to the medical needs of the entire population. Neighbourhoods bear a collective responsibility in ensuring they are welcoming places to their residents, with conveniences and security geared to the safety and quality of life of all residents.

Most neighbourhoods develop an identity reflecting just how amenable they are to supporting healthy lifestyles of those who live there. A critical element of any neighbourhood is green spaces, parks where people can gravitate to rest and feel comfortable among trees and elemental sport areas, alongside playgrounds for young children. Above all, the need for walking places to entice people to get out of their homes and move about, to walk, bicycle, skateboard or run; whatever appeals. In the winter those same open, treed areas offer places to iceskate, play winter games.

Where sidewalks are absent in many communities the invitation to walk about is somewhat muted. On the other hand, the move to use neighbourhood community mailboxes in lieu of home delivery is one other way to get people out however briefly, to walk a half-block to retrieve their mail. Shopping areas designed for busy intersections close to housing make it feasible for people to reject their cars for walking trips to pick up items at a pharmacy, supermarket, library, visit a medical centre.

People walk more frequently when they live in communities that have gridlike street patterns and where a mix of retail, commercial and residential areas make walking desirable. Walking, and access to shopping areas, to green spaces, reflect a lifestyle that adds years to people's life expectancy since that expended energy and exercise of limbs, lungs and heart make for a healthier population. An active lifestyle combined with ready access to green spaces has been associated with lower levels of stress and increased well-being.

Such neighbourhoods have been linked to a lower risk of developing diabetes and becoming obese. The risk for heart disease, in lock-step with avoidance of gaining undue weight, a sedentary lifestyle and diabetes, is then diminished. In a Swedish study, people who lived in communities with fewer fast-food outlets and convenience stores, experienced a lowered risk for type 2 diabetes (formerly called adult-onset diabetes).

There is also that inevitable link with poverty and less desirable neighbourhoods with fewer grocery stores and greater access to fast-food outlets, and a paucity of parks and community centres. The social structures built into community environments aid significantly in impacting on heart disease. A study recently out of the southeastern United States pinpointed an elevated risk for heart failure over a five-year-period for those living in low-income communities. In the most deprived communities, a 36 percent increased risk was noted in comparison to more desirable communities.

Heart disease affects about 2.4 million Canadian adults twenty years of age and older, representing the second leading cause of death in the country. We take it for granted that we are provided with potable water, heat, hydro and waste collection in a well-regulated urban society. We rarely give thought to amenities missing that were once an integral part of any inner-city neighbourhood; sidewalks.

Physical inactivity, inadequately nutritious diets are the key risk factors leading to obesity, diabetes and heart disease. We get into a vehicle, drive to work, drive back from work, drive to shopping and appointments, and then back home again to sit around and 'rest'. More thought needs to be given to resting after a routine physical exertion, and what could be more routine than walking? Climbing stairs. Visiting a park. Walking over to a neighbour's house for a chat.