Anyone who has celebrated a 65th birthday can say she’s been around the block once or twice. Judith Jaffe has been around hers nearly 100,000 times. Four days each week, Ms. Jaffe goes for a run on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Her route is simple. As soon as she exits her building on…
Between 2005 and 2014, more than 45,000 people were struck and killed by cars while walking in the United States. In the two years since, walking has only grown more dangerous. A new report from Smart Growth America, a D.C.-headquartered advocacy group that’s anti-sprawl, highlights the most dangerous metro areas in the country for pedestrians,…
A new study shows how cities with separated cycling infrastructure saw big safety improvements and higher ridership numbers. Several weeks ago, painted lines and flexible plastic lane dividers began materializing on Maryland Avenue, one of the major north-south arteries that connect downtown Baltimore to the residential neighborhoods above the city. The resulting 2.6-mile route is…
One Toronto neighborhood serves as an example of the limitations in drawing links between happier residents and the amount of green space they have access to. It’s 10 a.m. on a warm August morning in Regent Park, a neighborhood in the east end of downtown Toronto that has historically been defined by its public housing…
Sidewalk Labs believes personal car ownership is about to become history, making suburbs more accessible and better for walking and cycling. But what if it simply means people shove each child into a different car to get to school? A few months ago I interviewed Klaus Bondam, head of the Danish cycling union and formerly…
FEW people in America walk to work. Most of us drive to the supermarket. But more older people these days are looking for a community where they can enjoy a full life without a car. Ben Brown and his wife, Christine, say they weren’t thinking about retirement when they moved to Franklin, N.C., a small,…
Every summer for the past 15 years, Paris has closed a portion of its central riverbank highway to cars. For six weeks, the Georges Pompidou Expressway is transformed into a temporary waterfront park. There’s no swimming in the Seine or topless sunbathing—so it’s not your classic French beach experience—but there are deck chairs, games, food…
Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. – Søren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher and theologian Ideally, walking is a state in which the mind,…
Lines are on trend. There’s New York’s High Line that created a linear garden above the streets of Manhattan, soon to be joined by the Lowline promising the same through Lower East Side tunnels, where sunlight is to be directed underground using fibre optics. Sydney has got in on the act with its Goods Line…
A study by researchers at UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior has found that a healthy diet, regular physical activity and a normal body mass index can reduce the incidence of protein build-ups that are associated with the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. In the study, 44 adults ranging in age from 40 to…
