Lack of Walkability in the US is destroying mental health

I am glad there is a growing enthusiasm for walkable cities in the US. It&#x27;s something I&#x27;ve become very passionate about lately.<p>For those that are interested in learning more about the topic, I highly highly recommend the City Nerd youtube channel, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;@CityNerd">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;@CityNerd</a>.<p>I find a lot of arguments for for walkability tend to be emotional or needlessly hostile towards car owners. City Nerd takes a much more analytical approach and shares the data he uses for his videos, I think that&#x27;s something most of HackerNews can appreciate.

Why do you feel better when you go to Europe, or even to Disneyland? Humans crave walkable neighborhoods. American and Canadian infrastructure is the main reason we have so many mental health problems.

Expected a study, got an ad. Literally the &quot;above-the-fold&quot; piece is an ad to buy a MAWA hat and then a beg for a documentary that isn&#x27;t yet produced. Ugh.

There are other factors which contribute more to mental health but this is like justifying what the authors want using mental health as a reason. Making cities more walkable would be better for other reason but I doubt if mental health would significantly increase if we make cities more walkable. San Francisco is very much walkable but has highest mental health issues.

There’s nothing at this site except a hat that’s for sale and a claim that it’s raising money for a documentary?

Your mileage may vary, literally, but I walk 1-2 hours everyday and am 10&#x2F;10 on self-assessed happiness and mental health.

It’s not about being anti-car, it’s about having OPTIONS. In most of the USA, you are forced to drive. There is no good alternative.

It&#x27;s the cause of so many issues in America (physical, mental, social). A great book on the utterly broken build environment in North America is &quot;The Geography of Nowhere&quot;:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;book&#x2F;show&#x2F;125313.The_Geography_of_Nowhere" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;book&#x2F;show&#x2F;125313.The_Geography_of_...</a><p>Also, people forget - walkable doesn&#x27;t just mean &quot;somewhere you can walk&quot; - I means you can walk to activities of daily living (groceries, pharmacy, gym, job, friends places, etc).

The main reason I like walking is just to feel like I am among people, even if I am not actively interacting with them. In the Bay area, my favorite place used to be the airport, because that&#x27;s the only place I could see people other than my coworkers.<p>And this may just be me but I feel that the reason I liked being among people is because it creates the illusion of possibilities. Possibilities of friendships, a date, an interesting person, a job opportunity etc. This was reaffirmed when I chatted with utter strangers for hours at the airport.

I am fully on-board with walkable cities, it&#x27;s something I feel very strongly about. This link, however, is not to an article supporting the lofty claim of the title (currently &quot;Lack of Walkability in the US is destroying mental health&quot;), but rather to a <i>shop</i> where you can buy red Trump-style &quot;Make America Walkable Again&quot; hats.... for what end exactly? Not clear. The site is collecting donations, but they don&#x27;t say what they plan to do with them. All of this smells very fishy. (As an aside, I&#x27;d guess the number of US residents who support walkable cities AND who are willing to wear a hat that is designed to be mistaken at first glance for one supporting the former president is very small.)<p>If you&#x27;re interested in a more informative discussion of city design and its effect on lived experience, I recommend Not Just Bikes [1].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;c&#x2F;notjustbikes">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;c&#x2F;notjustbikes</a>

The closest I&#x27;ve come to slipping back into clinical depression is when I moved home for a few months to KS where the weather is brutalizing and on top of it, they live in the &quot;country&quot; where civilization is 20 minutes away.<p>One of my family members is clearly desperate for social outlets. And they thrive and gush over anywhere they travel to that inevitably is walkable and has tangible community.<p>Idk how people do it.

Had a fun conversation about language learning with an American friend who&#x27;s learning German.<p>She asked me what &quot;walkable&quot; is in German. Then it hit me, we don&#x27;t have this word because in Germany this concept is unknown.<p>Funny how societal factors have such an imprint in language.

It&#x27;s crazy how some places have no sidewalks at all. Dumbest city design.

Are there any studies that show that walkability improves mental health?

Lack of walkability in the US is destroying mental health…and that is great for for health insurance and pharmaceutical companies, as well “mental-health” tech entrepreneurs and ChatGPT.

And the disabled, the elderly and the pregnant can just go sign up for MAID. I lived a decade in both NYC and LA and my quality of life, at a lower cost, was vastly better in LA, where I had to drive almost everywhere. People who want to live in restricted zones, like 15 minute cities where cars are banned and all options are limited, should certainly be free to do so. But these schemes are detrimental to the majority of the population.

This is not surprising in a capitalistic first-world country and always happens when everything around you is designed for you to always drive somewhere.<p>It&#x27;s up to each individual person to decide how or if they want to spend time outdoors, be it a run, walk, or a bike ride.

IMHO we&#x27;re going to look back historically at single-family-detached-suburban-sprawl as not just the fulcrum in destroying the environment, but also actively harmful to the people that live there, especially children. Its easy for it to feel &quot;normal&quot; or even aspirational to us now, but its basically only ~3 generations old, and the first generation raised in suburbs was usually larger families in closer-in suburbs, people that could still walk and bike to more-than-nothing and would be able to interact with extended family and cousins more frequently than just the holiday mega-travel. So really its only the children of baby boomers and their children that have exhibited the full force of the mental health and social development impacts of the extremely isolating environment.

Resident of walkable “San Francisco” here.<p>I would say the stress of completing day to day errands and activities here having recently moved to a “walkable neighborhood” has been detrimental to my mental health, since moving out of the car centric western side of SF.<p>It’s a fact that most of the commercial corridors here are at the bottom of the hill, which means climbing home. It only seems walkable here until you have to climb up 200 feet+ in elevation to get home with your groceries, and panhandled along the way.<p>And at night, the situation is worse. I have learned that PCP is the most popular drug of choice for the encampment that exists between my walk from Whole Foods to home, and that explains the insanity that comes from it with an almost nightly occurrence.<p>And even then, options for completing all of my errands locally are limited; for example we lack a full line grocery store in walking distance, among other needed businesses (like Walgreens) that have closed.<p>I have found that getting what I need without a car in SF is 10x more complicated than having a car, so I keep mine.<p>When talking about walkable cities, I would leave this off the list.