Walkable Neighborhoods Lead to Increased Exercise, According to New Study

We’re all familiar with the endless benefits daily exercise provides for your body and mind.

While hitting the gym, playing sports, or engaging in outdoor activities like hiking are all fantastic forms of exercise, even something as simple as walking can make a difference in your health.

Walking comes with its own wheelhouse of benefits, including improving heart and metabolic health as well as mental well-being, sleep, and longevity.¹

Yet, the issue of a sedentary population remains a significant one, with an estimated 55% of the Canadian population failing to meet the physical activity recommendation.²

In a recent study, researchers set out to discover if where you live can help with this issue—we’re talking about neighborhood walkability.

Does an area’s walkability actually lead people to walk more in their daily lives?

• What is Neighborhood Walkability?
• The Study
• The Results
• Practical Implications

What Is Neighborhood Walkability?

Neighborhood walkability refers to how conducive an area is for walking. For many cities, you can find a “walkability score”, referring to how easy it is to walk through the area, based on factors like sidewalk quality, proximity to amenities, and traffic safety.

In general, urban areas tend to be more walkable than more suburban or rural areas.

One great example of a city with high walkability is New York City. This area of the US is designed with walking in mind. With a high density of stores, shops, restaurants, and other businesses, New York City allows you to get to almost any destination by simply walking. Plus, the easily accessible public transportation encourages walking rather than driving.

Thus, cities like New York offer great potential for Americans to increase their daily steps and exercise.

This stands in stark contrast to many US and Canadian suburban neighborhoods where driving is the main form of transportation, as most destinations are not within a walkable distance.

Neighborhoods with poor walkability will typically have low intersection density, low population density, and low accessibility to destinations that support physical activity, like grocery stores and parks.³

It's clear that different cities can vary dramatically when it comes to their layout and walkability. The question is, does this impact how much residents actually walk each day?

To test whether high neighborhood walkability translates into increased physical activity, researchers conducted a study…

The Study

In a recent study titled, “Association between neighborhood walkability and physical activity in a community-based twin sample”, published in the American Academy of Epidemiology, researchers explored whether living in more walkable neighborhoods influenced how much people walked.

They also looked at the effects of neighborhood walkability on factors like moderate/intense exercise rates and use of public transit.

To account for genetic and shared environmental factors that could potentially skew the results, the research team used twins for this study, comparing these habits both between different twins and within twin pairs.

The study looked at data from nearly 11,000 twins living across the United States, including both identical and same-sex fraternal twins, taken from the Washington State Twin Registry.

To measure a neighborhood’s walkability, the research team considered factors like population density, number of intersections, and availability of places people commonly walk to, like shops and parks.

To measure the physical activity of participants, the researchers mainly looked at neighborhood walking but also took more intense forms of exercise and public transit use into consideration.

The Results

The key finding of the study was that people living in walkable neighborhoods did indeed walk more in their local areas, even when accounting for genetic factors, shared family environments, and demographic differences. This suggests that walkable neighborhoods play a direct role in encouraging walking, supporting the study’s main hypothesis.

According to the results, a 1% increase in neighborhood walkability was associated with a 0.42% increase in neighborhood walking minutes per week.

This means that a 55% increase in neighborhood walkability would represent about a 23% increase in neighborhood walking per week (about 19 minutes per resident).³

The research team also looked at the effects of neighborhood walkability on public transit use and found that higher walkability reduced the chance of not using any form of public transit by 32%.³

The team emphasizes that even small increases in physical activity at the population level are important because they can contribute to improvements in public health.

The findings of this study align with previous research, which suggests that neighborhood walkability affects different types of physical activity in varying ways.

Practical Implications 

The results of the study demonstrate that the walkability of neighborhoods does make a difference when it comes to walking rates.

This has several implications for individuals and society as a whole.

For individuals, this means that walkability is a factor that should be considered when choosing a place to live. Choosing an area with higher walkability can mean increasing physical activity and promoting a more active lifestyle.

On a larger scale, the study’s results could help shape policies and decisions related to urban planning, zoning, and infrastructure investments aimed at making neighborhoods more walkable and encouraging people to walk more.

Having more walkable neighborhoods, in turn, could increase the health and well-being of residents.

High neighborhood walkability could potentially have other benefits as well such as reduced environmental impact from cars, more opportunity for businesses and economic growth, and greater social interactions amongst residents.

Take Home Message

While it can be difficult to get your daily physical activity, walkable neighborhoods provide an easy and enjoyable way for people to increase their daily steps and exercise levels.

So, wherever your neighborhood is on the walkability spectrum, try taking advantage of opportunities to incorporate walking into your day to improve your wellness and overall health.