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Manish Zamorodi. And I

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am walking. Because today on the show,

0:58

a more walkable

1:01

world. Throughout

1:03

the hour, ideas to get us

1:05

moving more. From the

1:07

latest in urban planning. To

1:10

walking as a form of protest. And

1:13

even as an act of kindness. But

1:16

first, a story about the project we did

1:19

last fall with a lot of listeners. It

1:22

was called Body Electric. And it started with

1:24

a little history lesson. Because there was a

1:26

time, long ago, when humans

1:28

ran and walked everywhere. Humans

1:31

kind of had the body that

1:33

they needed to be able to move. And

1:36

the African savannah became a kind of

1:39

perfect place in which the human

1:41

body could flourish. Vybar

1:43

Cregan-Reed is the author of Primate

1:45

Change. How the world we made

1:47

is remaking us. And

1:49

he says back on the savannah, humans

1:52

had a few main postures. Outstanding,

1:54

walking, running, and

1:56

resting in a deep squat. But

1:59

sitting. Not so much. It

2:02

meant that we could hunt for much

2:04

longer, much more sustained periods of time.

2:06

We could basically outrun any animal

2:09

on the planet. So the

2:11

human body was fantastic on the savannah. We

2:15

have approximately 49% of

2:18

the bone density than

2:20

that of hunter-gatherers. Wow!

2:22

No amount of time at the gym is going

2:24

to bring that back, right? Going

2:28

forward hundreds of thousands of years

2:30

to the agricultural revolution and access

2:33

to food became easier. We

2:36

didn't need to run around as much to hunt.

2:38

The biggest change that the

2:40

human body undergoes is

2:43

when we decide to soup you. The

2:46

fact that your fruit tree is now

2:48

in your garden as opposed to miles

2:50

away saves you a great deal of

2:53

fine. It also saves you calories. It means you don't

2:55

need to find as much food if you're using less

2:57

food. And

2:59

then in the industrial era,

3:01

the inventions of electricity and

3:03

gas meant life became even

3:05

more efficient and sedentary.

3:08

The amount of time we spend indoors starts to have

3:10

all kinds of effects on the human body. And

3:13

from that moment, what we can see is

3:15

a pull towards

3:17

efficiency so that

3:20

you're removing friction from your everyday life.

3:23

In the 1840s, it was definitely less than 1%

3:25

of the working population was doing sedentary work. Fast

3:28

forward to the 1980s and the digital age. In

3:31

the beginning, the people who worked with

3:34

computers were considered magicians. That's when the

3:36

personal computer entered the seat. But digital

3:38

took the mystery out of computers. Computing

3:41

comes into the home pretty slowly, beginning

3:43

in the late 70s, picks up a

3:45

bit in the 1980s. This

3:48

is computer historian, Lane Nooney. Until the

3:51

point that computers were so embedded in

3:53

our workplaces, in our schools and in

3:55

our domestic lives that we couldn't get

3:57

out of it. home

4:00

computer introducing the new personal

4:02

system. Apple computer will introduce

4:04

Macintosh. Lane

4:07

studies the effects of the personal computer

4:09

on our bodies and

4:11

they say that the digital age brought

4:13

a world of pain to us. I

4:15

think a lot of us don't realize

4:17

how much pain we live in

4:21

because of our interactions with computing. We

4:23

don't remember a time before this kind of

4:26

stress on the body. Taking backs,

4:28

stiff necks, tired eyes, we're sapped

4:30

of our energy. So the majority

4:32

of our J is spent consuming

4:34

technology and what are we typically

4:37

doing when we're consuming technology? Most

4:40

likely not moving. Keith Diaz

4:42

is an associate professor of

4:44

behavioral medicine at Columbia University

4:46

Medical Center and he

4:48

says this can cause big problems

4:50

in the long term. Sitting

4:53

for long periods at a time increases

4:55

your risk for many

4:57

chronic diseases including diabetes, many

5:00

forms of cancer, heart disease,

5:03

dementia, and ultimately

5:05

decreases your longevity. So

5:09

in Keith's lab at Columbia they

5:12

tested various ways to counteract all

5:14

that time on our bums and

5:17

they found a relatively simple

5:19

solution. So our

5:22

research suggests that taking a

5:24

walking break every half hour

5:26

for five minutes can

5:29

offset many of the harms from sitting

5:31

all day. Keith and his

5:33

colleagues found that leisurely walking

5:35

for five minutes every half

5:37

hour was the best way

5:39

to reduce people's blood pressure,

5:41

their glucose levels, and their

5:43

stress. So working out

5:45

in the morning is great but

5:48

not if you're going to sit for the rest of the

5:50

day. What I'd like to tell folks is that it's

5:52

not enough to just check off that exercise

5:54

box for your day and think that you're done and you

5:56

don't have to move the rest of the day. And

5:59

a standing down that doesn't

6:01

count because it all comes down

6:03

to regularly moving our muscles. So

6:06

our muscles are really important for regulating

6:08

our blood sugar levels. They're really important

6:10

for regulating our triglyceride levels which is

6:12

fat in your bloodstream. And

6:16

for the muscles to regulate those levels,

6:19

they have to be used. They have

6:21

to be contracted. They have to be stimulated.

6:23

What happens is when the muscles are idle,

6:25

when you're not moving and you're sitting for hours at

6:27

a time, the muscles stop regulating

6:30

and stop pulling blood sugar out of the

6:32

bloodstream. They stop pulling fat out of the

6:34

bloodstream. And obviously that's

6:36

harmful to have blood sugar levels rising,

6:38

to have these triglyceride levels rising in

6:40

your body. So what

6:42

we're finding is that your body needs, we'll

6:45

call them activity needs.

6:48

That it just needs just

6:50

regular stimulation

6:52

activation use. For

6:54

them to regulate your body's health, you

6:58

have to give your muscles the

7:00

stimulation they need to do their jobs. At

7:02

this point maybe you've started walking

7:04

while you're listening, if you weren't

7:06

already, and maybe you're also thinking,

7:08

walking every half hour, that's a

7:11

lot of interruptions. Well

7:13

that's what I wondered too.

7:15

Could people actually follow Keith's

7:17

advice outside of the lab?

7:20

And here's where Ted Radio Hour listeners came in. Over

7:22

20,000 of you signed

7:24

up for an NPR study with

7:26

Columbia to try moving for five minutes

7:29

every half hour, every hour,

7:31

or every two hours. Well

7:34

it did not work out for

7:36

everyone. This is a hard ask,

7:40

but a lot of people did make it happen and

7:42

they loved it for many different

7:44

reasons. Hello! Today I got lots

7:46

of friends on our five-minute walks.

7:48

It's good to walk, it's

7:51

good to be outside. I have

7:53

taken some of the breaks on my desk,

7:56

marching and dancing. I'm a

7:58

stay-at-home mom. while my kids

8:01

are still sleeping. I started implementing five

8:04

minute mic rides. 15

8:06

minutes of soccer drills outside. Five or 10

8:08

minutes before a meeting starts, sweep the house

8:11

or swap out the laundry or clean

8:13

the bathroom. My energy went

8:15

way up. I feel so much

8:17

better, I can focus better, and

8:19

I'm happier. I felt as

8:21

if I could go for

8:24

longer, and I felt

8:26

the strain, the mental

8:29

exhaustion dissipate. Now I'm

8:32

moving more and less bright. Keith

8:35

and his team are still parsing all the data

8:37

that they collected from listeners, and they're trying to

8:40

understand more about what helped

8:42

people succeed or fail at

8:44

taking regular movement breaks. Because

8:47

only half of the people who signed

8:49

up were able to incorporate moving every

8:51

half hour into their daily routine. So

8:54

yeah, a lot of people dropped out. But

8:56

for those who managed to consistently

8:58

move, the preliminary findings

9:01

are striking. Everybody

9:03

improved. Everybody saw improvements in

9:06

their fatigue levels, in

9:08

their positive emotions, and they

9:10

saw decreases in their negative

9:13

emotions. But what we

9:15

found was something we call a dose response relationship.

9:18

And what that means is that

9:21

the group that took the most breaks

9:24

every half hour had the

9:26

greatest response. In other words, the

9:28

more breaks people took, the better

9:31

they reported feeling. And

9:33

those breaks didn't seem to hurt job

9:35

performance. Folks had more energy, reporting on

9:38

average 25% less fatigue. Yeah,

9:41

we go from this vicious cycle of

9:43

feeling fatigued and feeling more fatigued and

9:45

just spiraling downwards to now we're flipping

9:47

it. And we're changing the game here,

9:49

and we're getting people to move, and

9:51

they're feeling more energetic, and they're moving

9:54

more, and they're building towards a more

9:56

positive life. I mean, that's amazing. And

9:58

now, months later... for some,

10:01

these new habits have just become

10:03

their new way of living and

10:05

working. And I want to

10:07

share one story in particular from

10:10

a listener named Zach in Maryland, who

10:13

managed to use this bioelectric project

10:15

to help him bounce back after

10:17

a really tough year. Hey,

10:19

Manoush. This is Zach from Maryland. The last

10:22

year has dealt me a major stroke at

10:24

the ripe old age of 44. That was

10:26

tough. But having you guys

10:29

in my corner made all the difference. My

10:31

doctors didn't really lay out

10:33

a recovery plan for someone in their

10:35

40s, trying to juggle

10:37

a career and family life. With

10:40

my job, video calls and Zoom are a big part

10:42

of my day and contributed

10:44

to the prolonged brain fog into

10:46

feeling like blah. But

10:49

then I had some heart

10:51

surgery to fix the root cause of

10:53

my stroke. To my

10:56

surprise, I found body electric about the

10:58

same time. After

11:00

that, I started taking these five minute

11:02

breaks every hour, or sometimes I'll

11:05

just take a walk outside if I need

11:07

some sunshine. So guess what?

11:09

The brain fog has finally lifted, and

11:11

I'm feeling more optimistic that it's gone

11:13

for good. My cognitive

11:15

therapist, she's blown away by my progress.

11:18

I feel like I've got my swagger

11:20

back. Seriously, you

11:22

guys have been a lifeline for me

11:24

during this whole journey, and

11:26

I'm so grateful for everything. Thanks a lot.

11:30

Zach, thank you, and congrats.

11:33

Yeah, our technology keeps a lot of

11:35

us from doing what our bodies need.

11:39

For many of us, though, sitting doesn't

11:41

have to be the norm if we

11:43

experiment a little bit with our daily

11:45

routine. But let's

11:47

also acknowledge that easily adding movement to

11:49

our lives often

11:51

depends on who's in charge of our time.

11:55

Yeah, well, I mean, ultimately what you're getting at is

11:57

a culture change. We spend

11:59

our time on the field. time trying to convince the workforce

12:02

and employers that you

12:04

should allow your employees to take

12:07

breaks to move. A

12:09

employee who's in a better mood,

12:12

who's feeling less fatigued and feeling more energized

12:14

is a more productive employee. My

12:16

hope is that our findings kickstart

12:18

a conversation among executives, healthcare

12:21

professionals, and tech designers to

12:23

find more ways for more

12:25

people to take their long-term

12:28

physical and mental health into

12:30

consideration every day. If

12:33

you're curious and think you might want to take

12:35

the Body Electric Challenge, go

12:38

to npr.org/Body Electric.

12:41

You can get a one-page guide to get you started.

12:44

You can also listen to the series by searching

12:46

for Body Electric wherever you listen to

12:48

podcasts. When we

12:50

come back, how our built environment

12:52

makes us want to walk, or

12:55

too often doesn't. Our

12:58

urban planner, Jeff Beck. There

13:00

are enough people who want to live car-free that

13:02

if given the choice to live car-free, they would do

13:05

so. Today on the show,

13:07

A More Walkable World, I'm

13:09

Anushin Zamorodi, and you're listening to the TED

13:11

Radio Hour from NPR. We'll be right back.

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16:20

the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

16:22

I'm Manoush Zomorodi. And today on

16:24

the show, a more walkable

16:27

move. In 2020, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo won

16:29

re-election, in part by putting one particular idea at

16:31

the heart of her campaign. The

16:43

idea? To

16:47

transform Paris into a 15-minute

16:49

city. Meaning, make it possible

16:51

for Parisians to live, work,

16:53

buy groceries, play in the

16:55

park, all within a 15-minute

16:57

walk or bike ride from their front

17:00

door. Her plans included removing

17:02

60,000 parking spots,

17:04

adding bike lanes, urban forests,

17:06

and more local businesses. All

17:09

to make the city more climate conscious

17:11

and give its citizens a better quality

17:13

of life. And Paris

17:15

isn't alone. Imagine a Cleveland where

17:17

everything you need is less than

17:19

15 minutes away. Regardless

17:22

of where you live, shove access to a

17:24

good grocery store, vibrant parks, and a job

17:26

you can get to. Yes,

17:28

Cleveland hopes to give it a

17:31

try. Dublin is the latest to embrace

17:33

it. But while the term is

17:35

new, the concept itself is not. Yeah,

17:37

see, it's the old meal and a new wrapper. This

17:41

is urban planner Jeff Speck. He's

17:44

been talking about 15-minute cities for

17:46

over a decade, but he's been

17:48

using a different name for it. The

17:51

Walkable City. Yeah, it's the same

17:53

concept. It's just another way of

17:55

describing this idea

17:57

that most of your daily life

17:59

is. needs are at arm's

18:02

length. Jeff's 2012 book,

18:04

Walkable City, How Downtown Can Save

18:06

America, One Step at a Time,

18:09

became kind of an urban planning

18:11

Bible. And he says that

18:13

since then, many cities have followed

18:15

the playbook to get their citizens out

18:17

of the car and onto their

18:20

feet or bike. Almost

18:22

everywhere I work understands the

18:24

value of becoming a place

18:26

where the car is an instrument of

18:28

freedom rather than a prosthetic

18:30

device that you need to live your

18:33

daily life. And now,

18:35

all these years later, the

18:37

data show that walkability improved

18:39

so many things for city

18:41

dwellers. Traffic safety, community identity,

18:43

tourism, stormwater management, transit effectiveness,

18:45

urban competitiveness, it reduces obesity,

18:47

other chronic diseases, health care

18:50

costs, crime, traffic congestion, maintenance

18:52

costs, fossil fuel dependence, air

18:54

pollution, ambient noise, and it

18:56

increases lifespan, neighborhood vitality, worker

18:58

creativity, social interaction, intergenerational connectedness,

19:01

community inclusivity, employment rate, economic productivity, local

19:03

investment, property value, efficiency of land, public

19:05

and civic responsibility, urban resiliency, beauty, and

19:07

happiness. Yeah, clearly the list

19:09

goes on and on. And to experience

19:11

it, Jeff says, go visit Portland, Oregon,

19:14

and then go visit Salt Lake City,

19:17

Utah. Those are two cities from the same era, just

19:20

designed based on different approaches. Walking

19:23

around Portland is so much more pleasant

19:25

than walking around Salt Lake City. Part

19:27

of the reason, Portland

19:29

has shorter street blocks. You can fit

19:32

nine Portland blocks inside

19:35

a Salt Lake City block. Those

19:37

blocks have more things to look at,

19:39

places to run into people. What's amazing

19:41

when you walk down a street in Portland is that

19:44

you're presented with so many different choices. You're also presented

19:46

with a ton of corners, right? And every corner is

19:49

showing you at least four different shops. But

19:51

Imagine the choices that you have. One Morning On

19:53

your way to work, you may need to pass

19:56

the dry cleaner. Another Morning, you may be, you

19:58

know, dropping your kid off at school. Traffic.

20:01

Is not the some guess the typical street

20:03

in Salt Lake to carry the traffic that

20:06

serves all that real estate has five or

20:08

six lanes of the rest. The typical street

20:10

in Portland has to listen. Guess

20:12

that continues from the Ted Stevens.

20:15

Portland made a bunch of decisions

20:17

in the nineteen seventies that began

20:19

to distinguish it from almost every

20:22

other American city. While most other

20:24

cities were growing and undifferentiated Spare

20:27

Tire of Sprawl, they instituted an

20:29

urban growth boundary. While most cities

20:31

were rooming out there roads removing

20:34

parallel parking and trees and rocks

20:36

slow more traffic, they instituted a

20:38

skinny streets program. And

20:41

while most cities were investing

20:43

in more roads and more

20:45

highlands, they actually invested in

20:48

bicycling. And. Walking and they

20:50

spent. Sixty. Million dollars

20:52

on both facilities was seems like a lot

20:54

of money, but it was spent over about.

20:57

Thirty. Years of two million dollars a year?

20:59

not that much and half the price of

21:01

the one cloverleaf. That. They decided

21:03

to rebuild in that city. These changes

21:06

and others like them changed the way

21:08

the Port Landers lives and their vehicle

21:10

miles traveled for day. the mother nice

21:12

person drives. Actually, Peace in Nineteen Ninety

21:14

Six. Has. Been dropping ever since

21:17

and they now drive twenty percent less

21:19

than the rest of the country. So.

21:22

Portland has been this signing example of

21:24

walkability for a while now and some,

21:26

but where have you been working more

21:28

recently? What cities are now trying to

21:30

become more walkable and to catch up

21:32

And and how hard is it. Will.

21:34

I would say the real challenge

21:37

is this the the many really

21:39

small communities that don't have the

21:41

wherewithal, the budget, the leadership to.

21:43

Change. Themselves. And.

21:46

that's something you find in both well

21:48

off and less well off communities but

21:50

i work mostly in mid size cities

21:52

interestingly i work in a letter read

21:54

cities a grand rapids oklahoma city where

21:56

local business leaders understand that being a

21:58

place where people want to be is

22:01

the key to driving their economic

22:03

growth forward. That's

22:05

been a new development in how cities

22:08

view their future, that they realize

22:11

now that the workforce is mobile and

22:13

that people will locate in places that are

22:15

more desirable. So a lot of

22:17

cities who might otherwise have been resistant to change are

22:19

saying, geez, how can we become more walkable so that

22:22

we become more desirable? Oh,

22:24

interesting. So you're hearing from more

22:26

places who are like, okay, yes, we're ready to pull

22:28

the trigger on this. We need to get going with

22:31

turning our city into a walkable one. Yeah.

22:34

So what that means at a deeper

22:36

level is to create an environment in which

22:38

people will make the choice to walk or

22:40

to bike or to use some other form

22:42

of micromobility rather than driving. And

22:45

to do that, according to my general theory

22:47

of walkability, the walk has

22:49

to be as good as the drive, which

22:52

means it has to satisfy four basic

22:54

criteria. It needs to be useful. It

22:57

needs to be safe. It needs to

22:59

be comfortable and it needs to be interesting. And

23:02

each one of those criteria then places

23:04

upon us a series of mandates that

23:07

surround urban design and city planning my

23:10

profession to create that

23:12

environment for the potential pedestrian or

23:14

cyclist. Okay. So

23:17

to be walkable, the city needs to do those

23:19

four things. They need

23:21

these attributes for every walk a person

23:24

takes. Let's start with the first. The

23:26

walk needs to be useful. What

23:28

do you mean by that? So useful

23:31

has to do with the proper mix of uses.

23:33

So places to live, workshop, recreate all

23:35

within walking distance. It typically means having

23:37

more housing in your downtown, which

23:39

would balance the uses in your downtown and have it

23:41

be active around the clock. I

23:43

think that it's important to go back to Jane

23:45

Jacobs, who wrote the most important

23:48

planning book of our era, The Death

23:50

and Life of Great American Cities. She

23:52

said a great place has To

23:54

have people in it around the clock. and you can't have

23:56

a great restaurant or a great gym without a dinner crowd

23:59

as well as a lunchtime. I'm crowd that one

24:01

a neighbor, which is principally a business

24:03

district. And becomes a try.

24:05

Mixtures district with the proper balance

24:07

of jobs and housing. Ah it's

24:09

and comes to life. And

24:12

that's a strange benefit of covert

24:14

that we've seen in a number

24:16

of of our communities. Is

24:18

that more people are living and working in

24:20

the same place? Yeah, but a lot of

24:22

suburban areas that were just bedroom communities are

24:24

now please or people are also working on

24:26

and the downtown says actually gotten a real

24:28

a real shot in the arm as a

24:31

function of that. Okay,

24:33

so we've we've made our city, we made

24:35

our want useful. Now we need to make

24:37

love to see. How.

24:40

So the typical American sweetest,

24:42

designed for speeds well over

24:44

the posted limit and designed

24:47

to encourage. Or. Anti social

24:49

and quite dangerous driving. right?

24:52

I mean I was was working in a project. In.

24:54

Alabama where we wanted the speed limit to

24:56

be twenty five and the engineered The local

24:58

engineer made us engineer the streets for thirty

25:01

five because that's how the rules work and

25:03

as exact opposite of what they do in

25:05

the Netherlands. For example, where are you make

25:07

the streets as tight as they need to

25:10

be to cause the drivers to go? The

25:12

speed that is safe for the community. The

25:15

resistance that you find. Ah

25:17

to accomplishing this typically lies in

25:19

Public Works Department and Engineering departments,

25:21

and which are led by engineers

25:24

who haven't been back to school

25:26

in the last twenty years, and

25:28

who still embrace the older concept

25:30

of traffic safety which in America

25:32

grew out of highway safety. And.

25:35

An important. Thing. To

25:37

clarify. Is that what makes

25:40

you safe on a highway is exact

25:42

opposite of what makes you say center

25:44

downtown. So if you think about yourself

25:46

when you're driving on a highway where

25:48

your speed is a constant, anything you

25:50

can do to reduce opportunities for conflict

25:52

to increase elbow room. Is going

25:55

to make that streets safer so

25:57

wider lanes. One. way traffic

25:59

no parallel parking, no trees, that's

26:01

the clear zone, you

26:03

know, big swooping curves, right?

26:05

All those things make a

26:07

highway safer, but it's precisely the

26:10

opposite that makes a downtown safe. You want

26:12

to have narrow lanes, you want to have

26:14

parallel parking, you want to have two-way

26:16

traffic, you want to have lots of intersections and

26:19

lots of other things going on. Trees actually

26:21

make streets safer, the studies show that very

26:23

clearly, and so the

26:25

biggest impediment often in cities to

26:27

making them safe and comfortable to walk around

26:30

is a traffic engineer who is trained

26:33

on highway design and has brought it into

26:35

city design. Okay,

26:38

our walk is useful, our walk is

26:40

safe, how do we make

26:42

it number three, comfortable for walking?

26:45

So comfortable is the most

26:47

designy aspect of the

26:49

discussion because, and it's

26:51

a little counterintuitive, we like

26:54

to be in places that

26:56

have spatial definition. All

26:58

animals, humans among them, are

27:01

seeking two things according to evolutionary

27:04

biologists, they're seeking prospect and refuge.

27:06

You want to be able to see your predators

27:08

before they attack you and you want to

27:11

feel that your flanks are covered from attack

27:13

and that's in our bones and we can't help it. So

27:15

if you can picture Lower Manhattan

27:18

or, you know, the cranky parts of our

27:20

oldest cities, those have the smallest blocks of

27:22

all and if you think about most European

27:24

cities, they have a medieval core

27:26

which is the most delightful place to spend time.

27:29

But not only are the blocks small but of

27:31

course the street spaces are very tight and

27:33

that gets us into the comfortable walk and

27:36

that delightful feeling of

27:38

being embraced by

27:40

buildings on both sides. Yeah. So

27:43

that idea of spatial definition and

27:45

creating outdoor living rooms is

27:47

central to making walkable places

27:49

and we, you know, our favorite streets

27:52

tend to be quite narrow and then

27:54

the buildings aren't that tall but they're Considerably

27:57

taller than the streets are wide. In.

28:00

That brings us to the fourth and

28:02

final principle. Of making a city walkable

28:04

which is that the work needs to

28:07

be. Interesting. Yeah,

28:09

so the final category. Of.

28:11

Interesting. Is. Basically not

28:14

having blank walls, not having parking, structures,

28:16

having lots of eyes on the street

28:18

in the form of doors and windows,

28:20

and signs of human activity in a

28:22

we we humans are among the social

28:24

primates. Nothing interest as more than other

28:26

humans and that's what causes us to

28:28

walk. When you arrive

28:31

at a at a city to work with them

28:33

at, do you find that you need to first?

28:35

Sort of change. Their

28:37

code for whole outlook on how to

28:39

provide the best thing for their citizens

28:41

is there a mindset that you have

28:43

to get them to do before you

28:45

actually start talking about the details. Well,

28:48

I think what's different now as opposed

28:50

to ten years ago or even certainly

28:52

thirty years ago when I started doing

28:54

this work is that there's now an

28:57

openness with in Public Works department, engineering

28:59

departments to this information. And the thing

29:01

that has evolved the fastest. His

29:03

bicycle infrastructure. and when we're when we're

29:05

building new projects now, we're mandated by

29:07

the city to not have the bike

29:09

lane in the street. The. New standards

29:12

to put it up on the sidewalk. It's.

29:14

I mean you're you're speaking to.

29:17

Number to a safe walk

29:20

or a safe ride in

29:22

this case on a bicycle

29:24

that we've been hearing so

29:27

many headlines about the rise

29:29

and pedestrians and that believe

29:31

biker das Zealous. more cities

29:34

are becoming more welcoming to

29:36

flocking and riding bikes. Why

29:38

Is this happening? So,

29:40

morse more cities are getting more

29:42

serious, but improving pedestrian safety bless

29:44

really just starting to kick in

29:46

at volume. and it used to

29:48

be that the poor people live the

29:50

inner city in the wealthy people were

29:53

suburbanized now many more of america's poor

29:55

are living in these places where you

29:57

have to get further and further from

29:59

the city centre in order to afford

30:01

a mortgage, that's where a lot

30:03

of people are stuck now and sadly

30:05

they're stuck there without cars, many of them.

30:07

So you have a kind of the double

30:09

whammy of people living without cars in

30:12

an environment that was designed without

30:14

ever imagining people living there

30:16

using it without cars. And

30:19

cities that want to see themselves

30:21

thrive in the long term have been

30:23

even actively subsidizing the creation

30:25

of housing in their downtown chorus and

30:28

that's even before we acknowledged that we

30:30

had a national housing crisis. That's one

30:32

condition. I think that the larger factor

30:34

is the rise of the SUV and

30:37

the pickup truck as the standard vehicle

30:39

for getting around our cities. They're

30:42

heavier, they have more momentum, they're

30:45

harder to break, but

30:47

more importantly the hoodzers are very high.

30:50

So instead of being hit in the legs and landing

30:52

on the hood, you're hitting the torso and you're under

30:54

the vehicle. You're likely

30:56

to being killed by an SUV when you're

30:59

hit versus a car is about

31:01

two to one. But

31:04

we haven't gotten to the point where we

31:07

are giving up our cars, right? I mean there's

31:09

a lot of talk right now about climate

31:12

change and that one of the solutions

31:14

is to, if you can,

31:16

buy an electric car. Why

31:18

aren't we talking about giving

31:20

up our cars yet?

31:24

I mean it feels un-American to

31:26

even say that, but I

31:29

live in a town, Brooklyn, where I

31:31

can walk everywhere, but to get out

31:33

of New York City to go anywhere

31:35

remotely rural is not

31:37

easy with public transportation. So

31:39

there's a couple things to unpack there.

31:42

The first is that everyone who can get

31:44

an electric car should get an electric car. That's

31:47

very clear. The main answer

31:49

to your question though is that so much

31:51

of the American landscape has been built to

31:54

mandate automobile use and

31:56

there are a large number of Americans,

31:58

perhaps a majority of. Americans who

32:02

through no fault of their own and often through no choice

32:04

of their own live in

32:06

a place where the automobile is this prosthetic device

32:08

that they need to get around. In

32:10

those conditions then the question is what

32:12

can you do to improve their quality

32:15

of life, to lighten their carbon footprint,

32:17

to make them safer. A

32:19

number of suburbs have managed

32:21

to consolidate enough property like

32:23

a dead mall or a

32:25

dead office park that they could create a

32:27

new little town center. You find

32:30

that in a place called Avalon in Alpharetta,

32:32

Georgia outside of Atlanta or

32:34

a place called City Center Houston where

32:37

it was maybe 25 acres and they put

32:39

everything there. They put

32:41

places to live, work, shop, recreate and

32:44

now it's becoming a real community even though it's

32:46

just a smallish property in the

32:49

heart of suburbia. But

32:51

in terms of my own experience, I'm

32:56

actually grew up loving cars. I'm a car

32:58

nut and that's the kind of my big

33:01

dark secret but

33:04

it just gets to the larger issue

33:06

of cars in the right

33:08

number in the right place. Cars

33:11

aren't the problem. They become

33:13

the problem because we've allowed ourselves to

33:15

design our society around them. I

33:18

don't know, should we just give up

33:21

on ending sprawl Jeff and accept that

33:23

we'll need to create cities that continue

33:25

to turn into suburbs that go

33:27

on for miles and that people

33:29

will continue to need cars even

33:31

if small pockets of these places

33:33

are walkable. When

33:36

I joined this movement in the

33:38

80s, I really thought we could

33:40

stop sprawl. I've pretty

33:43

much given up on that goal after

33:45

what? After 40 years. I've

33:49

replaced it with a new goal which

33:51

is essentially to offer the walkable quality

33:53

of life, the walking lifestyle

33:56

to as many more Americans

33:58

as possible. That's

34:00

why I'm going where the people are

34:03

and doing much more downtown work. Most

34:06

of my work is for cities who call me in and say, we

34:09

realize that we could be so

34:11

much better if we made our downtown more walkable

34:13

and what are the steps to getting there? That's

34:18

city planner Jeff Speck. His book is

34:20

called Walkable City, How Downtown Can Save

34:22

America One Step at a Time. You

34:26

can see both of his talks at

34:28

ted.com. On the show today, a

34:31

more walkable world. I'm

34:33

Manusha Zamorodi and you're listening to the Ted

34:35

Radio Hour from NPR. Don't

34:38

walk away. Support

34:54

for NPR and the following message

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34:58

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35:04

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35:06

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35:09

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35:11

I think that shows the need, the

35:14

dreams and the desires of the community

35:16

to have the independence and to have

35:18

the financial freedom that's important to them.

35:20

The reason why it's so important to

35:23

me to be out there, to share

35:25

information and to educate the community is

35:27

because I know that a dream doesn't

35:29

always help you to be successful. You

35:32

need the competency, you need the wisdom, you

35:34

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36:56

the Ted Radio Hour from NPR. I'm

36:59

Anushin Zamorodi. On the

37:01

show today, a more walkable world.

37:04

Ideas to get us all... We

37:07

are currently in the mall.

37:09

Manassas, Virginia, Manassas Mall. We're

37:12

walking with a crew of women

37:14

out here. This is Vanessa Garrison.

37:16

Because it's raining and we are a rain or

37:18

shine organization, so we weren't going to

37:20

cancel. We were just like we're going inside. Vanessa

37:23

is the co-founder of GirlTrack, an

37:25

organization founded in 2010. It

37:28

now has over 50 chapters of

37:31

black women and girls across

37:33

the country who walk regularly

37:35

together. It's an

37:37

effort to combat the high

37:40

rates of obesity, heart disease,

37:42

hypertension, stroke and diabetes that

37:44

black women have faced for

37:46

generations. Here are

37:48

co-founders Vanessa Garrison and Team Morgan

37:50

Dixon on The Ted stage. Why

37:53

are black women dying faster

37:56

and at higher rates than any other group

37:58

of people in America? from

38:01

preventable obesity-related diseases.

38:03

We asked ourselves that same question. Why

38:06

is what's out there not working for

38:08

them? Private weight loss companies, government interventions,

38:10

public health campaigns. I'm going to tell

38:12

you why. Because they focus

38:15

on weight loss. They're looking good in

38:17

skinny jeans without acknowledging the trauma that

38:19

black women hold in our bellies and

38:21

bones. It has been embedded in our

38:24

very DNA. The best advice from hospitals

38:26

and doctors, the best medications from pharmaceutical

38:28

companies to treat the congested heart failure

38:31

of my grandmother didn't work because they

38:33

didn't acknowledge the systemic racism that she

38:35

had dealt with since birth. And

38:39

it's why we say that 30 minutes

38:41

a day of walking is radical self-care.

38:44

For these women, the most immediate

38:46

solution was to start walking.

38:49

Walking is a way that social change

38:51

has always been created in the world.

38:54

It's also the single most powerful thing a person

38:56

can do for their health. It

38:58

reduces your risk of almost all chronic

39:00

diseases by over 50%. It

39:03

improves your mental health. And

39:05

then for us, there's a powerful impact

39:07

of collective action and activism, where when

39:09

we are walking in our neighborhoods, we

39:11

are walking, talking, and solving the problems

39:13

of those neighborhoods together. So for all

39:15

of those reasons, walking. Walking

39:20

next to Vanessa is Kimberly Powell. Hi,

39:23

I'm Kimberly Powell from Centerville, Virginia. I

39:26

first heard about Girl Trek when I saw the

39:28

TED Talk a couple of years ago. And

39:30

I was just blown away. So they got my

39:33

attention with that. And then last year,

39:35

I lost one of my best friends.

39:37

She was a neighbor. And she and

39:39

I would sometimes walk together and do a lot

39:41

of things together. And so I

39:43

decided to look into Girl Trek.

39:46

Came here my first group in August. And

39:48

I've been walking with us ever since. We

39:51

hug. We hug

39:53

each other. We pray for each

39:55

other. Also walking is Charmaine's death.

39:58

When someone's sick, when someone's going

40:00

through something, we're there

40:02

to empower and encourage. You

40:04

don't find that everywhere and every day. And

40:07

so when you find it, you

40:09

just say, wow, these are my

40:11

people. I'm

40:15

a caregiver. And

40:17

I take care of family

40:19

and family members. I have

40:21

three grandsons. One of my

40:23

middle grandsons is autistic. I

40:26

have a 91-year-old father. And

40:29

I also have a 91-year-old aunt. So

40:32

these moments and these times

40:35

are important. It's extremely important for

40:37

me. And believe

40:40

it or not for them. Because

40:43

if I'm not whole, how

40:46

can I support someone else? Who needs

40:48

me? At

40:50

the end of their walk, the chapter's

40:52

organizer, Yvonne Rice, checked her phone. Oh,

40:56

the step count. We did 7,051 steps

40:58

this morning. And

41:02

I know that the goal is 10. But hey,

41:04

whatever we can get in, we're

41:07

happy. Because the day is

41:09

still young. That

41:13

was Vanessa Garrison, Timberly Powell,

41:15

Charmaine Dunn, and Yvonne Rice.

41:18

Many thanks to all of them for including us

41:20

on their walk. You can watch

41:22

Vanessa Garrison and T Morgan Dixon's talk

41:24

at ted.com. And you can find Girl

41:27

Track at girltrack.org. On

41:32

the show today, a more walkable

41:34

world. So we've talked about

41:37

moving throughout the workday, making

41:39

our cities more walkable, walking for our

41:41

health and as a form of activism.

41:44

And now, a story about a

41:46

man who walks because

41:48

he just can't stop. I

41:51

guess my own journey as a

41:54

pilgrimage that I've been on for

41:56

all these years. I

41:58

grabbed my banjo. And I

42:00

walk, I think walking

42:02

is essential and for me it's

42:05

a sacred journey. Walking is

42:07

sacred. This is John

42:09

Francis. He calls himself the

42:11

Planet Walker because he's been,

42:13

well, walking the planet for the last

42:16

50 years. Because

42:18

I like walking, I guess. We

42:22

caught up with him near Cape Town,

42:24

South Africa at the start of a

42:26

long trip. My plan is

42:28

to turn north and go through

42:31

Natal, Zambia, Ethiopia, Ethiopia and into

42:33

Egypt. It

42:39

will take him months, but that's

42:42

okay. I'm like 78 now, so

42:44

I'm just not the spry young

42:46

fellow that, you know, do on

42:48

a backpack and just kind

42:50

of walked out the door and when

42:53

I got tired I put

42:55

a tent up or throw my sleeping bag

42:57

down under a bridge and those

42:59

kinds of things because I

43:02

try to walk about 15 to 20

43:06

miles a day. All

43:09

this walking started as a protest

43:11

in 1971 when John happened to

43:14

witness a massive oil spill not

43:16

far from his home in California.

43:19

Yeah, maybe a million gallons

43:21

spilled into the San Francisco

43:23

Bay and was

43:26

taken out by the tide and

43:28

then flooded back onto Marin County

43:31

and parts of the Bay. Here's

43:34

John Francis on the Ted stage. I

43:37

witnessed two oil tankers

43:40

collide beneath the Golden Gate and

43:43

it disturbed me so much that I

43:45

decided that I was going to give

43:48

up riding and driving in motorized

43:50

vehicles. That's

43:53

a big thing in California. And

43:56

it was a big thing in my little

43:58

community of point rays. station in

44:01

Inverness, California because there was only about maybe 350

44:03

people there in the winter.

44:06

This was back in 71 now.

44:09

And so when I started walking around,

44:12

people would drive up next to me and say, John, what are you

44:14

doing? And I'd say,

44:16

well, I'm walking for the environment.

44:19

And they said, no, you're walking to

44:21

make us look bad, right? You're

44:24

walking to make us feel bad. And

44:26

maybe there was some truth to that

44:28

because I thought that if I started

44:30

walking, everyone would follow. Sadly,

44:33

that didn't happen. But

44:36

other wonderful and strange things

44:38

did as John walked

44:41

and walked. For instance, one day

44:43

he decided not to talk. And

44:46

so on my 27th birthday, I

44:48

decided not to speak just for

44:51

one day. I just give my

44:53

community the gift of my silence

44:55

because I just talked so

44:57

much and thought I knew everything. This

45:00

vow of silence ended up

45:03

lasting 17 years. And

45:06

regardless, John made friends. He learned

45:08

to build boats. He also got

45:10

an education. I was able to

45:12

go to school without speaking and in

45:15

two years earned my bachelor's

45:17

degree in science and mathematics.

45:20

But my dad was really concerned. He said,

45:22

we're so proud of you. But what

45:25

are you going to do with a bachelor's degree

45:27

if you don't ride in cars and talk? John

45:29

wasn't sure. So he walked

45:32

to another university where he got

45:34

his master's in environmental sciences. Of

45:36

course, my dad showed up again. And

45:39

he was, you know, just

45:41

awestruck that I had graduated

45:43

with a master's degree, not

45:45

speaking. John went on to

45:47

get his PhD very

45:50

quietly. And then he kept

45:53

walking. But this time

45:55

he decided to head south. To

45:57

the Caribbean, to Barbados. to

46:01

Venezuela, to

46:03

Brazil, and Brazil

46:05

to Bolivia, and Bolivia

46:08

to Argentina. And I

46:10

spent a month in

46:12

Antarctica, then came

46:15

across from Antarctica to New

46:17

Swaya. He did take one

46:19

big break from walking, several years in

46:21

fact, at the request of his fiancé.

46:24

We'd been dating for 10 years,

46:26

and she said, John, no, it's

46:28

time for us to get married

46:31

and raise a family. So

46:33

I did that. I returned

46:35

home and I got

46:37

married. We had two boys. They're 23

46:39

and 17 now. And she said, okay,

46:42

you can go walk again. So I'm

46:44

here in South Africa beginning

46:52

that walk. If

46:54

someone says, well, I understand you

46:57

love to walk. It's very important to you.

47:00

But what do you think the purpose is

47:02

of it for

47:04

other people? Are

47:06

you drawing attention to a cause? Are you

47:08

talking to people as you go? Tell me

47:10

what it's why, that why.

47:14

Yeah, I realized that how

47:16

we treated each other was

47:19

really a very

47:21

important part of

47:23

being an environmentalist because if

47:26

we oppressed each other or exploited

47:28

each other, all those

47:30

things were going to manifest in

47:33

the physical environment around us. And

47:37

then I realized that

47:39

the reason that me

47:41

as an African American made

47:44

it across the United States,

47:47

not speaking, just

47:49

playing a banjo and was

47:51

able to go to school and get

47:53

my degrees, end up with a PhD

47:56

is because of

47:58

people's kindness. human

48:00

kindness. And without that,

48:02

I don't think that I would have made

48:05

it across America. I

48:08

think there's some people listening with

48:11

whom that story really will resonate.

48:14

But there probably are other people who are

48:16

like, this guy's an

48:18

old hippie. He's walking around with

48:20

a banjo and then spreading kindness.

48:23

How does that work? How

48:25

do you explain it? How do

48:27

you know if you're spreading kindness? What's it

48:30

like on a day-to-day basis? Well,

48:33

you know, I mean, there

48:35

are people that I'm certain I just can't

48:37

explain it to. I just

48:40

try to live it. And

48:42

in living it, I

48:44

think that is that

48:46

essential part of what

48:49

we do is living

48:51

what we believe. This is just what I

48:53

believe and this is how I express

48:56

it in my life.

48:59

So that's very high level. Do you mind if we

49:01

go very micro and

49:04

detailed? Would you mind taking me

49:06

through a day in

49:08

the life of you walking?

49:11

Okay, in Africa, I'm

49:14

leaving from a place called

49:17

Gordon's Bay and

49:19

I'm trying to get to Massel

49:22

Bay. And we

49:25

got to a place where we

49:27

stopped for lunch. And

49:29

there's a gentleman who

49:32

is sitting at a table with another

49:34

gentleman and he sees the banjo and

49:36

he goes, what? Did

49:38

I miss the concert? And

49:40

I turned and looked at him and I said, well,

49:43

I know I have some music for you. So

49:47

I played something for him and I

49:49

explained to him the walk and I

49:51

was heading to to Betty's

49:53

Bay. And he said, you know, I

49:56

live in Betty's Bay. When are you

49:58

going to start walking tomorrow? And

50:00

I said, well, seven o'clock, I'm going to start walking.

50:03

He says, I'm going to be here with

50:05

a friend, and we're going to

50:07

walk with you. And

50:10

the next morning, there I was at seven

50:12

o'clock. And Harry was with his friend

50:15

Mike. And

50:17

there are two South Africans, and

50:21

they're speaking Afrikaans to everyone

50:23

around them and English to

50:26

me. We all take off.

50:29

And the next day,

50:31

someone else wanted to walk with me.

50:34

So it was kind of like that

50:36

for the first week of walking that

50:39

people just wanted to walk with me.

50:41

I had some company and

50:44

places to stay wherever I went.

50:47

I mean, you're connecting people as you go.

50:50

What do you talk about when people join

50:52

you on a walk? Because they're usually strangers,

50:55

it sounds like. Sometimes

50:57

people have questions about

50:59

how I got there.

51:03

But more often than not, people

51:07

just want to be silent

51:09

and walk with me silently.

51:13

Why do you think that is? I

51:16

think they want to experience

51:18

what it's like walking

51:21

without having to say anything

51:24

and just feeling

51:26

the Earth and each other.

51:29

And there's a

51:31

kind of a magnetism or

51:33

a electric field that

51:35

surrounds us and connects

51:37

us to the planet. And

51:41

we just become part of that. And

51:44

probably that's the most fulfilling times

51:46

when we're all just walking together

51:49

and not having to

51:52

say very much about

51:54

anything except just being

51:57

where we are. go

52:00

through different mental

52:03

stages or physical discomfort

52:06

at various points that you've come

52:08

to recognize over the now 50

52:10

years that you've been doing this?

52:13

Well, well, yes. I mean, it still

52:17

takes me a little while to start off,

52:19

but once I get going, then I just

52:22

get into this place. It's

52:26

like a mantra, and

52:28

I'm just

52:30

walking and just walking and

52:33

just walking. It's

52:35

not that I love it

52:37

or it's not that I hate it.

52:39

It's just this place where I am

52:42

and it's just who I am, and

52:45

I'm walking and I'm

52:47

walking. Often

52:49

there's a hill. So climbing

52:51

up the hill is just

52:53

one step after the other, one

52:56

step after the other, and

52:59

then at some point you're at the top.

53:05

I love that to look out

53:08

over the landscape and see another

53:10

hill and see another

53:12

hill. You

53:14

would think that I would get tired of that,

53:16

but I don't. It's

53:19

just part of being on the Earth and

53:23

being together with the planet,

53:26

being part of the planet. That's

53:30

John Francis, the planet walker.

53:33

You can learn more about his

53:35

latest journey and all the climate

53:38

data he's collecting along the way

53:40

for the Globe Science Education Program

53:42

at planetwalk.org. You

53:45

can also watch his full talk

53:47

at ted.com. Many thanks

53:49

to him for playing his banjo for us too. Montelillon,

54:00

Fiona Guerin, and James Delahousie.

54:02

It was edited by Sanaz

54:05

Mezchkinpour and me. Our

54:07

production staff at NPR also

54:09

includes Rachel Faulkner-White, Matthew Cloutier,

54:12

and Hersha Nahada. Irene Noguchi

54:14

is our executive producer. Our

54:16

audio engineers were Margaret Luthar,

54:19

Ted Miebang, and Gilly Moon.

54:22

Our theme music was written by Romtine

54:24

Ereblue. Our partners at TED are

54:26

Chris Anderson, Michelle Quinn, Alejandra

54:29

Salazar, and Daniela Belareza.

54:32

I'm Manoush Zamorodi, and you've been

54:34

listening to the TED Radio Hour

54:36

from NPR. This

54:46

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