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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)

#41

Post by RobertoG »

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,…

"but apparently in that area, just being out and about on foot was enough of a reason to be considered suspicious."

Maybe, this is an American thing. Some colleagues of me explain how, in a job trip to Atlanta, they decide to go back to the hotel walking. They could see the hotel from where they were, so, why not?

Sure enough, the police stopped them and wanted to know what was wrong.

They have a lot of fun explaining it.

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)

#43

Post by vidarh »

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…

Once of the reasons I want massively more dense residential areas in cities is because I want city living but shorter distances to large parkland.

I live in a relatively green area, but still my street alone (~660 houses)"wastes" around 40,000 m^2 of space compared to new high rises on the way near our local station. I'd love to see far more of the residential areas compressed like that, if only it meant a reasonable portion of additional land was turned into parks (and here's the problem - in practice this is of course additional housing, not replacing equivalent amount of less dense units). We do have a "country park" just 20 minutes walk away, so we're not in a bad spot, but it could be so much better.

If I was given Sim City like powers over London, I'd raze large parts of it outside of the centre, and replace it with super-dense hubs around the main rail hubs outside of the centre, connect them with a high speed orbital railway plus spokes out to the smaller cities further out, and free up ~half the current area of London for park lands. You could fit 30m+ people in London and still make it feel spacious and green compared to the scattered, busy suburban nightmares that covers large part of the outer reaches of London today.

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)

#44

Post by seanmcdirmid »

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,…

I was jet lagged at a resort hotel in Tucson, and decided to walk to a Starbucks at 4 am in the morning. It took around 3 hours (I misjudged the distance) on partially rural desert roads, beautiful stars at that time in the morning with tall cactus silhouettes in the background (was close to the mountains, while Tucson is very good about keeps light pollution down). No police, but the walk back was a pain with the Arizona sun out by then.

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)

#45

Post by vidarh »

static_noise wrote: post #6

We now call it meditation.

You can certainly meditate while walking and it can work very well, but most of what people describe doing while walking in this thread is not meditation (some might be). E.g. "letting your mind wander" which is one of the things people frequently like to do while walking is pretty much the opposite of most meditation practice (that's not a criticism of doing that; letting your mind wander is wonderfully relaxing too, but in a very different way to meditation).

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)

#46

Post by _kyran »

raverbashing wrote: post #7

I like walking, biking is not for me, so I walk And yes, you have a different perspective of the city when you do it. Because it's easier to realize how places connect Yes, it won't take you as far as a bike, but it's doable You can walk to work if possible, get on an earlier stop if going by public transport, or, I dunno, just walk around the block if you have to park at your work.

I do both, biking I can cover more distance, but if I'm riding fast, I'm usually not thinking much. Same goes for running.

Walking or riding slowly is what gives me time to ponder.

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)

#47

Post by [deleted] »

hugh4 wrote: post #33
thomasahle wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are both centering your argument about whether or not people used to walk more or less than they do now. You are not presenting any more evidence than BBC did.

The BBC are the ones writing the damn article about the supposed trend, I'd say it's their responsibility to provide evidence.

[deleted]

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)

#48

Post by iopq »

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…

I walk aimlessly from time to time, but I don't see that many people do it. There are far more people that do it in other countries, and I assume that was the case in the United States earlier.

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)

#49

Post by JustSomeNobody »

RobertoG wrote: post #41
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,…

"but apparently in that area, just being out and about on foot was enough of a reason to be considered suspicious." Maybe, this is an American thing. Some colleagues of me explain how, in a job trip to Atlanta, they decide to go back to the hotel walking. They could see the hotel from where they were, so, why not? Sure enough, the police stopped them and wanted to know what was wrong. They have a lot of fun explainin…

Sometimes police will stop people who look the complete opposite of suspicious just to make sure they don't need help.

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)

#50

Post by z3t4 »

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,…

If I would see some dudes walking along the road in nowhere, I would probably also stop and ask if everything was ok, or call the cops.
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