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The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)

bbc.co.uk

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Re: The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)

#101

Post by panglott »

CaptSpify wrote: post #93
tinbucket wrote: post #80

Walking is, I think, a combination of habit and culture. Both sets of my grandparents, from opposite ends of the country, used to walk quite a lot without any real purpose for doing so. They did this well into their 80s, and so did their friends. It seemed just to be something they did, and always had done. My parents, by contrast, almost never walk when they can drive, and will often drive to a park to let their dog…

I think location is also a big factor here. I've lived in multiple parts of the US, and most of it is simply designed against walking. I enjoy taking casual walks, but when I lived in the midwest, I had to drive to a park to walk. There were no sidewalks, and the streets were dangerous for pedestrians (lots of blind curves, speeding cars, etc). It always frustrated me that I had to take a vehicle to go for a walk.

Much of this is also perception. Lots of places are fine for walking or cycling, but people are so accustomed to driving everywhere that they drive even when it's somewhat ridiculous, like driving from one parking spot to another in the same a parking lot instead of just walking to a store elsewhere in the strip mall. Or driving to a store a block away and trying to find a parking space instead of just walking.

Some places are actively hostile to walkers: building only arterial roads and refusing to build sidewalks to exclude walkers and the wrong sort of people (black or poor). Relatively few places are so hostile to drivers. So people grow a bias toward driving everywhere. Load your bicycle on the car and drive it there to ride around in circles.

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)

#102

Post by Spooky23 »

kleiba wrote: post #11

There were times in my life (thesis writing) where I'd go and sit in the library all day to work and come home in the early evening. The psychological stress on me during that time was tremendous. Every evening, after coming home, I'd have a small dinner and then go for a one-hour walk, always the same route. At that time, I lived in a small town, and my route would take me down a dead-end street, across another one,…

A guy I went to high school with is in the process of walking across the United States. He's pushing his gear in a cart that looks like a baby carriage. His first week on the road, someone frantically called the cops to report a man walking down the road with a dead baby in a stroller.

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)

#103

Post by Spooky23 »

mseebach wrote: post #9

> But are people losing their love of the purposeless walk? BBC Magazine strikes again. No, they're not losing it, it's not "slowly dying". Did "people" at large ever have that? Having the time and energy to go aimlessly wandering was a luxurious privilege until very recently. If anything, the existence of "[a] number of recent books [that] have lauded the connection between walking - just for its own sake - and thin…

In Ireland, strolling through cemeteries was a common weekend pastime in the pre-war era. I remember as a kid in the 80s you'd see old people and asian people strolling around after dinner. Now my block is pretty much a ghost town at 6:30PM.

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)

#104

Post by coldtea »

ethanbond wrote: post #79
RobertoG wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah... but because they are walking.. I think that say something about how the city is designed.

Younger US cities aren't designed for walking so yes it looks weird when you're walking around. I don't know anything about Atlanta but in Arizona, per parent comment's story, for example, it's strange to see people walking around because it's way too hot in 80% of the state to walk around for leisure. On top of that, the towns are so spread out that it makes no sense to walk from point A to point B. So if people are…

>I don't know anything about Atlanta but in Arizona, per parent comment's story, for example, it's strange to see people walking around because it's way too hot in 80% of the state to walk around for leisure.

I don't think it has anything to do with the temperature.

You see tons of people walking around in cities in equally hot or hotter climates, from Cairo to the tropics...

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)

#105

Post by mjmahone17 »

christophilus wrote: post #71
1782635782 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having the time and energy to go aimlessly wandering was a luxurious privilege until very recently You just made this up.... Firstly, you have never been around since the beginning of humans, and secondly, you haven't even read any history books if you think humans have always been extremely busy and that somehow they are not now. The opposite is actually true. Humans have had a lot more free time in the past. It i…

Yeah. A political scientist I know told me that at some points in Catholic history people had almost 1/3rd of the year off. I couldn't find a reference for that, but this site indicates about 1/4 of the year off as leisure time: "Altogether there were about 80 days of complete rest with over 70 partial holidays, that is, about three months of rest spread over the year." http://www.traditioninaction.org/History/A_021_…

In the modern day, most jobs have ~100 days of complete rest (weekends), plus about 6 bank holidays, and if you took your PTO as half days, another 20-30 days of partial rest (if you get 10-15 days of PTO). That's not quite as much (20 fewer partial days, or 10 days less of time off), but you also likely have some reasonable expectation of not being required to work more then ~10 hours per day, which wasn't necessarily true historically.

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)

#106

Post by noonespecial »

VMG wrote: post #59
kleiba wrote: post #11

There were times in my life (thesis writing) where I'd go and sit in the library all day to work and come home in the early evening. The psychological stress on me during that time was tremendous. Every evening, after coming home, I'd have a small dinner and then go for a one-hour walk, always the same route. At that time, I lived in a small town, and my route would take me down a dead-end street, across another one,…

Reminds me of this story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pedestrian > Eller writes that Bradbury's inspiration for the story came when he was walking down Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles with a friend sometime in late 1949. On their walk, a police cruiser pulled up and asked what they were doing. Bradbury answered, "Well, we're putting one foot in front of the other." The policemen didn't appreciate Ray's joke an…

This happened to me in a small rural town in Iowa in 2013. It was so rare to see a younger guy in a hoodie walking around my parents' neighborhood that residents called the police. I was taken back to my parents house in the back of a squad car to "verify my identity". I was curtly informed that "just going for a walk" was probably not a good idea.

I have never felt more dystopian.

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)

#107

Post by kristofferR »

Chris2048 wrote: post #97
kristofferR wrote: post #42

There's regularly articles in Norwegian newspapers about how weird the Norwegian culture of purposeless walking is to foreigners and tourists, so it's probably not dead in Norway at least.

> Norwegian culture of purposeless walking Is this Hiking?

Well, we don't really separate walking and hiking in the Norwegian language (I actually had to google the difference).

According to Statistics Norway[1], 85% of the Norwegian population has taken a walk of 3 hours or less in the last 12 months (of 2014) and around half a walk of more than 3 hours.

I didn't find updated stats about frequency, but in 1998 46% of Norwegians went on walks for longer than 30 minutes at least 2 times a week [2]. I don't have a reason to believe it has changed significantly.

[1] https://www.ssb.no/kultur-og-fritid/statistikker/fritid/hver...

[2]http://www.vg.no/forbruker/typisk-norsk-aa-gaa-paa-tur/a/303...

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)

#108

Post by dang »

viraptor wrote: post #20
jokoon wrote: post #19

Wasn't this already posted on hackernews? I've already read it, and I was a little curious because that's a little what I started to do last year (my apartment and school started to feel like a prison cell). I just walk in my city to explore, preferably greener, quiet areas without car traffic, but I always plan a zone I'll go to. I use offline openstreetmap (OSMAND) on my smartphone. I try to go to different places…

Yes it was: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7679506

HN mostly doesn't treat reposts as dupes once well over a year has passed, which is the case with this one.

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)

#109

Post by MicroBerto »

My version of "taking a walk" is swimming laps.

My finest work is accomplished in the pool, going back and forth. Been a swimmer all my life, and if I don't get at least a swim or two in each week, things start to turn to shit. It's my meditation, and despite being the most boring thing on earth for some people, it's one of my favorite things to do.

Many introverted mathematical minds would love it, but you gotta learn proper technique to be able to really get into a good careless rhythm. I highly recommend it.

It's a thinking man's sport.

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)

#110

Post by allemagne »

messel wrote: post #32

My super power. During the week I walk a loop in the morning (9.5miles) and when I have to commute to NY, it's a few miles downtown,a brief lunchtime wander around, and a swift walk back up in the evening to Penn. Part of my walking is for health reasons, part is due to a need to move about, part is meditation. My mind wanders while out for a good walk, it's the most liberating feeling I experience. My wife and I go…

Guilty? That sounds lovely
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