Zone for the walk of life

I tried to walk across a street, in a small town once. There was so much traffic, I waited so long some friends drove by and asked if my car broke down. I said “no, you’ve never seen anyone walk across the street before have you?” We don’t walk enough in America. Our high tech fitness trackers tell us 5,900 steps a day. 10,000 is recommended for health. I’m a medical data scientist, I work on high tech medicine. But a simple thing like walking is healthy. Walking regularly reduces sick days, boosts immunity, and reduces death. My grandmother walked to the grocery store several times a week and lived to 94. She walked because she had safe, pleasant, sidewalks and places to walk to, weaving walking into the fabric of life. Few neighborhoods have places to walk to because of single use zoning. By design our homes, offices, and shopping are all separated and connected by traffic clogged roads - weaving sitting in traffic into the fabric of our lives. We don’t walk more because it’s dangerous. 13 pedestrians and climbing are killed by cars a day in America. Our own zoning laws stop us from building more good places to walk; the few places left are expensive. My grandmother’s home, by the grocery, with the sidewalk, costs well over $2 million dollars now. Having places to walk to would be nice, but America is already built around driving. You can usually walk your dog around the block so maybe it’s not that bad. And it’s too expensive to change now. It is that bad and we can’t afford not to change. Our life spans have been dropping the last two years despite spending 18% of all money in America on healthcare. Death rates are up among younger and poorer people. The causes are lifestyle and environment related: obesity, heart disease, air pollution, traffic accidents, and type 2 diabetes. Now 9% of American adults have diabetes and we spend $250 billion dollars a year on treatment. Another 40% of adults are prediabetic. Many will get type 2 diabetes skyrocketing spending. We can’t spend our way to health, but we can walk there. How can we build walking back into the fabric of our lives? First change zoning. The state of Massachusetts provides compact, mixed use, walkable, zoning guidelines in it’s Transit Oriented Development toolkit that put businesses, homes, and trains within walking range. It’s up to each town to adopt the guidelines - few do. California is trying a statewide approach proposing compact, walkable zoning near all transit stations - which has failed. There’s lots of resistance from homeowners to new walkable development because any new development has meant more soul crushing traffic. New development doesn’t have to mean more traffic. Think of classic walking downtowns in Boston, San Francisco, and Barcelona. I rented a flat in Barcelona for vacation. We could walk to restaurants and markets. We go on vacation to walk around town. We also walk when it’s built in. I lived in an apartment on a bike path near Boston and I walked across the world. I walked to the subway, road to airport then flew to Korea and Japan and back, all without getting in a car. I also cycled to work daily for 18 months in Japan. I got so fit I had six pack abs - never to be seen again once I came back to America. We’ve tried spending our way to health. It’s not working. Now we need to tell our local and state governments to rezone for compact, mixed, use, walkable development. Then we can start physically building walking into the fabric of life so future generations can walk their way to health.