Walking and Its Contribution to Objective Well-Being

Introduction

The last ten to twenty years have seen a growing interest in walking as a subject of political, public, and academic debates. However, while a growing body of research suggests that walking has positive effects on well-being (Doughty 2013; Hanson and Jones 2015; Martin, Goryakin, and Suhrcke 2014; Roe and Aspinall 2011; Sallis et al. 2016), these investigations conflate well-being with subjective mental health, individual resilience, or subjective happiness (Atkinson 2013; Atkinson and Joyce 2011), thereby excluding other important aspects of well-being, namely objective well-being.

This paper argues that well-being is not exclusively constituted by subjective emotions or attitudes, and that it is therefore important to capture well-being’s objective dimension in walkability research and design. According to “objective accounts” of well-being, certain things are good or bad for persons, independently of whether they are desired or whether they give rise to pleasurable experiences (Angner 2010; Chappell and Crisp 1998, 553). By linking walking to objective well-being, this paper invites us to consider how to incorporate objective well-being in the planning and design of pedestrian environments.

While this is an innovative approach to conceptualizing walking in relation to objective well-being, it nevertheless fits with the view, expressed in planning theory more generally, that objective values are important, and even constitutive, of urban environments, specifically of good public spaces. Literature on the importance of public space emphasizes public spaces’ contribution to objective goods like civic virtues, cultural heritage (Banerjee 2001; Kohn 2004; Zukin 2012), pluralism, and diversity (Mehta 2014). Values, like civic virtues and pluralism, are grounded in the intrinsic goodness of public space, and are not dependent on whether persons happen to like public spaces or how they feel in public spaces. Thus the objective goods of civility and diversity provide a reason for planners and designers to pay attention to both subjective (attitudinal) values and objective (nonattitudinal) values in planning and design. In a similar vein, this paper argues that we have reason to pay attention to objective goods in walking environments.

The aim of this paper is to offer an argument for incorporating objective well-being in the planning and design of walking environments. The main argument is advanced by defending two claims: first, objective well-being is a function of how persons develop and exercise human capacities. I therefore begin by introducing “philosophical perfectionism.” Perfectionism is a view in philosophy of well-being, concerned with explaining how objective goods affect human well-being (Hurka 1993). One influential version of perfectionism—Aristotelian perfectionism (perfectionism hereafter)—is the view that our well-being is dependent on the successful development and exercise of our various human capacities, and that the human capacities manifest themselves in things that are intrinsically valuable and therefore objectively good, such as knowledge, friendship, love, beauty, and achievement (Bradford 2016; Hurka 1993).

The second claim in this paper is that walking, as an embodied mobility mode, promotes multiple types of objective goods: walking as knowing, walking as creativity, walking as sociability and walking as achievement. I end with a discussion on the implications for the walkability research and design agenda and for the emerging science of “Happy Cities.”

Well-Being as Perfectionist Flourishing

Perfectionism is the view that our well-being is determined by how well we develop and exercise our human capacities (Bradford 2016; Hurka 1993; Kraut 2007). Human capacities include rationality, innovation, growth, imagination, creativity, insight, and understanding (Kraut 2007, 178). According to the perfectionist view, human beings flourish when they are “developing properly and fully, that is, by growing, maturing, making full use of the potentialities, capacities, and faculties (under favourable conditions) they naturally have at an early stage of their existence” (Kraut 2007, 131).

A further essential component of perfectionism is that our capacities are developed to engage in things that are intrinsically valuable, that is, valuable in and of themselves and not in virtue of being desired. In other words, the development of our human capacities has an object: to attain things like moral goodness, rational activity, the development of one’s abilities, meaningful and close personal relations, knowledge, and aesthetic appreciation (Parfit 1984, 499). In attaining these things, we are exercising our human capacities and fulfilling our flourishing potential. Finally, a good life involves developing all of the human capacities to some degree and combining them in different activities (Ferdman 2019; Hurka 1993).

In sum, perfectionism is an objective view of well-being. In contrast to subjective well-being approaches, which consider well-being to be a function of what we desire or what makes us happy, the perfectionist approach is grounded in things that are good for us because they are intrinsically worthy. The following sections demonstrate various ways in which walking provides a unique opportunity to develop and exercise our human capacities, and thereby improve our objective well-being.

Walking as Embodiment

Walking is an embodied activity (Cass and Faulconbridge 2017; Cresswell 2010; Doughty and Murray 2016; Middleton 2010). It is through our bodies, on the move, that we make sense of our surroundings. According to this view, walking offers an embodied basis for experiencing and engaging with the world (Ingold 2007; Rybråten, Skår, and Nordh 2019). But what is it about embodiment that is good for our human well-being? Stated differently, why is it that most of us intuitively think that a good life cannot be restricted to the life of the mind?

In one way, the answer is quite obvious: an essential part of being human is to be an embodied being. To the extent that the development and exercise of our human capacities is what makes for a flourishing life, to live an embodied life just is part of our well-being. Philosopher Robert Nozick (1974, 42–43) offered a thought experiment that helps flesh out what exactly it is about embodiment that is essential to our well-being:

Suppose there was an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Super-duper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain. Should you plug into this machine for life, preprogramming your life experiences? [. . .] Of course, while in the tank you won’t know that you’re there; you’ll think that it’s all actually happening [. . .] Would you plug in?

There are two reasons to resist plugging in. First, we want to do certain things, not just have the experience of doing them. Second, we want to be a certain way, to be the certain sort of person. Floating in the tank does not tell me anything about myself: am I a caring person, courageous, intelligent, and so on? Beyond having experiences as a certain kind of person, it is important for me to be that person, and living life in the machine is devoid of that kind of being (Nozick 1974, 43–45). Living an embodied life is the manifestation of doing things and being a certain person, rather than merely having the experiences of these things.

In one sense, all mobility types are embodied. Nevertheless, walking provides a unique opportunity to engage with the things that make embodiment essential for well-being: to do things and be a certain person. The following sections demonstrate that when we walk, we are enacting our agency. In walking, we use our sensory, affective, and physical capacities in combined ways, and this combination helps us attain well-being goods like knowledge, sociability, and achievement, in a well-rounded way.

Walking as Knowing: Immersion

Knowledge is one of the most fundamental goods for our well-being. We educate ourselves partly because we need skills to advance in life but also because we think it is good in itself to know something about the laws of nature, the history of our culture, and our place in the world. More generally, it is good to know about the world, about one’s relation to the world, to know one’s self, and to have moral knowledge (Hurka 2011, chap. 4). Hurka categorizes types of knowledge into two metaphorical groups: knowledge associated with Athens and knowledge associated with Manchester (Hurka 2011, 83). Athenian knowledge is of highly abstract principles, for example, the knowledge sought by a theoretical physicist. Mancunian knowledge (named after the city of the industrial revolution) concerns a multitude of particular facts, such as those of a biologist studying a particular forest. The best understanding, according to Hurka, is a combination of both types of knowledge—the abstract and the particular.

Walking can contribute to the process of knowledge acquisition by diversifying the ways we acquire knowledge. Walking provides opportunity for knowledge of both types—the Athenian and the Mancunian. The Mancunian type of knowledge is acquired by the pedestrian in the act of walking, from observing, and being immersed in the material and social environment of the streetscape (Pinder 2011). To walk is to make new connections, physical and conceptual, over time and space (Rendell 2006, 153). Walking allows the pedestrian to process knowledge in a pace that is more favorable to understanding. One reason for this is that walking enables immersion: the speed of walking allows the pedestrian to digest more complex information about the place one is inhabiting.

On a slightly different vein, to walk is to be attuned to other pedestrians and objects. In comparison to other modes of transport, walking enables a greater diversity of social interaction. Moving on foot provides a wider range of opportunities for things or events to interrupt and intrude upon the flow of people’s movements (Middleton 2016, 305). Walking is an instance of “body-ballet,” in which integrated sets of embodied gestures, behaviors, and task-oriented actions of individuals combine into dynamic wholes that become important places of interpersonal and communal exchanges, actions, and meanings (Middleton 2011, 2871). While walking, we develop a sense of place. By moving about in an urban space, we strengthen our relationship with it and learn that social space is a rhythmically structured whole, made of synchronized time-space everyday life routines (Wunderlich 2008). The human body physically encounters places and simultaneously inscribes traces of location on the human self by incorporating “incoming strata” of meaning. Over time and reciprocally, this process influences the meaning of places (Anderson 2004, 256). Each walk thus adds to the Mancunian body of knowledge, whereas the meaning of places is a kind of Athenian knowledge, a more abstract and general type of knowledge which acts as an organizational structure.

Furthermore, the embodiment of walking allows the walker to gain knowledge that is phenomenologically distinct from theoretical knowledge acquisition (e.g. learning about something by reading about it in a book or being told about it). Walking is a grounded activity: the environment is perceived through the touch of one’s feet on the ground (Ingold 2004). Walking is also a way of understanding one’s environment through the intertwining activities of walking and seeing (Bairner 2011). As walking is an embodied experience, it is a means of keeping the social and material spheres on the same explanatory plane (Middleton 2010), engaging other senses as well, such as touch, smell, and sound, thus providing a more sophisticated acquisition and interpretation of incoming information. It is with the navigation of the body through space that we are able to create awareness and locate ourselves within the bigger picture. Importantly, in the embodied walk, the senses are engaged unreflectively, enabling a sense of “flow,” which contributes to further exercise of our capacities, as discussed shortly. Since walking allows immersion and dwelling in the representational and lived world (Wunderlich 2008), the embodiment of walking provides a unique type of space-time knowledge for the walker.

The unique space-time environment that is created in a walk is different from a space time which is created in other modes of travel. Cycling requires immersion in one’s environment, but motion is much faster, thereby prioritizing sight over the use of other senses. This would be even more pronounced for driving. Due to the slower pace of walking, it enables the exercise of all our senses in a well-balanced combination, compared to high-speed mobility modes, especially the car.

Walking as Knowing: Arranging Understanding in an Explanatory System

The Athenian type of knowledge—arranging our knowledge in a hierarchical explanatory structure of abstract principles—is also something that can be acquired through walking. Walking creates an environment in which new ideas can form, allowing connections to be formed between bits of scattered knowledge. Macauley suggests that walking is a kind of transformative encryption and inscription within the physical environment. In this manner, the ambling serves not only as a form of physical location within the city limits and a metaphysical location within the world but also as a kind of methodological constitution of meaning (Macauley 2000, 28–29).

Well formed, distinct, remarkable paths invite the eye and the ear to allocate more attention to our surroundings. The sensuous grasp upon such surroundings are thus extended and deepened (Lynch 1960), supporting the mental activity of organizing knowledge into hierarchical structures. Jane Jacobs referred to the intricate system of persons, their activities, and material objects on an urban street as “sidewalk ballet,” composed of multiple and dynamic components organized in a complex order (Jacobs 1961, 50–54). Walking as “sidewalk ballet” is a way of organizing this intricate, ever-changing collection of discrete and prosaic acts and objects into an organized system of meaning and value.

It is important to stress that walking as knowing, whether as immersion or as a way to structure the world, engages a combination of the human senses, not just one sense at a time. As walking is embodied, it unreflectively makes use of our different senses. For example, Jacobs’ account of the “sidewalk ballet” (Jacobs 1961, 50–54) describes the experience not only as an experience of sight but also of sound (hearing a toddler play his toy mandolin and hearing women laugh), taste (customers frequenting the cafes and food stores along the street), and touch (putting out the garbage can and people joining an impromptu Highland fling). Furthermore, it is very rare that we exercise our human capacities to know, understand, imagine, play, or be social, separately from other capacities (Kraut 2007). As embodiment dissolves the distinction between body and mind, knowledge is not something that resides only in the mind. Rather, knowing is embedded in embodied practices (lisahunter and emerald 2016). Walking as knowing is therefore an exercise in combining our capacities, using a combination of our senses, to fit incoming information gained in the walk into a hierarchical explanatory structure.

Walking as an Opportunity for Creativity

One of the ways that walking contributes to the development and exercise of our human capacities is that it enables creativity. Csikszentmihalyi (1998) categorizes the creative processes unto four phases: preparation, incubation, insight, and verification. Walking is especially relevant for the incubation phase because it gives the mind an opportunity to relax and lets the unconscious work on the problem, which is essential for insight—the subsequent stage in creativity (Keinanen 2016).

The synchronization of the rhythms of the body with the rhythm of walking contribute to enhanced memory and creativity (Keinanen 2016; Kuo and Yeh 2016; Oppezzo and Schwartz 2014). Walking, as an embodied, active mobility, creates a sense of “flow.” Flow has the capacity to separate two forms of efforts: concentration on a difficult task and the deliberate control of attention. In a state of flow, maintaining focused attention requires no exertion of self-control, thereby freeing mental resources to be directed to solving problems (Kahneman 2011, 41). In the process of walking, a space time emerges, which allows the pedestrian to focus their attention on other concerns. One’s sense of time expands or contracts as they walk, and opens up the possibility to concentrate on other things, in a way that other modes of transport cannot provide (Middleton 2011, 2872, 2874).

Thus, flow improves the generation of novel yet appropriate ideas. Recent and emerging research indicates that walking enhances cognition, ideation, and creativity (Aspinall et al. 2015; Erickson et al. 2011; Labonté-LeMoyne et al. 2015; Oppezzo and Schwartz 2014; Schaefer et al. 2010; Weuve et al. 2004). Walking as a flow and the room it builds for creativity may be explained by the following neurological processes: the physical aerobic activity enhances cognition by increasing blood flow and neurotransmitter activity and decreasing stress hormones in the brain (Ferris, Williams, and Shen 2007; Hillman, Erickson, and Kramer 2008; Salmon 2001). The motion in space creates a state of “flickering,” a neurological process of wandering between the mental state of episodic memory and spatial navigation. To create something new, one must combine ideas in some form of novel associations. Walking creates immediate changes in blood pressure and oxygen intake that help spread activity across more distant brain regions, enabling the state of flickering that in turn enables the process of making associations necessary for creativity (O’mara 2019).

In a slightly different vein, to the extent that large physical environments afford free movement and exploration, these environments may also facilitate divergent problem solving relative to smaller, constrained spaces. This is because the spatial arrangement of the broad spatial environment primes expectations for the distribution of “resources” in one’s semantic space (Chan and Nokes-Malach 2016). Walking allows to literally gain perspective (Keinanen 2016).

Recall that well-being depends on the development and exercise of our human capacities. Walking is a way to create opportunities for development and exercise of our capacities, in which new ideas and thoughts can grow and develop, especially compared to alternative mobility modes, like the car, where creativity-encouraging “flow” is lower. In driving, for example, the mind is occupied with concentrating on the road and cannot afford to free up mental space for other cognitive functions (Sörqvist et al. 2016). One of our essential human capacities is the capacity to innovate, to imagine, and gain insight and understanding. Walking is advantageous, compared to driving, because it creates a time space for exercising these capacities. Importantly, these capacities may be exercised even when the explicit intention of the walk is instrumental—to get from A to B. As one walks, one may find that in the process, they are generating new thoughts and ideas. Importantly, even if in the future, the autonomous vehicle makes driving obsolete, this in itself will not be conducive to creativity. Travel in the autonomous will be sedentary, whereas creativity is better achieved in moderately paced active motion.

Walking and Sociability

Developing and exercising our social and affective capacities is an essential part of our well-being. The successful development and exercise of these capacities enables us to have friendships, to love and to participate in public life, things which, according to the well-being approach defended here, are intrinsically valuable. Walking provides the opportunity to develop and exercise our social capacities in public spaces, through the development of sensitivity to social signals and the nurture of trust. Sensitivity to social signals depends on developing the brain’s “mentalizing network” which allows to draw inferences about the agency in others (i.e. their movements) and respond with one’s own “mirroring” network (e.g. falling into step with others), creating a shared world through joint attention and interpersonal synchronization (O’mara 2019).

An important aspect of sociability is its ability to engender trust. Overt interactions have the potential to bring people together and increase a sense of neighboring (te Brömmelstroet et al. 2017). Jane Jacobs (1961, 56) famously defended walkability as a condition for nurturing trust:

The trust of a city street is formed over time from many, many little public sidewalk contacts. It grows out of people stopping by at the bar for a beer, getting advice from the grocer and giving advice to the newsstand man, comparing opinions with other customers at the bakery . . . most of it is ostensibly utterly trivial but the sum is not trivial at all—it is a feeling for the public identity of people, a web of public respect and trust.

There is some empirical evidence to supports Jacobs’ vision. The walkable neighborhood is associated with trust and social engagement (Leyden 2003), as well as sociability and a sense of community (Appleyard, Gerson, and Lintell 1981; B. B. Brown and Cropper 2001; Wood, Frank, and Giles-Corti 2010). Shared movement (walking together) can produce supportive social spaces that are experienced as restorative (Doughty 2013). Walking together can produce “walking-together-bound-activities”:

conversing, being available for conversation, touching, laughing, offering of offerables such as cigarettes or sweets, parting, and so on, are made relevant, and expectable, by the sheer fact of walking-together . . . the fact of walking-together provides for the propriety and expectation of these activities (Ryave and Schenkein 1974, 272).

Goffman (1972) argued that streets are “trust-building” environments. When two parties encounter one another on the street, they both have a conception of how matters ought to be handled between them, triggering voluntary coordination, whereby both parties believe that this coordination exists, and each party acknowledges that the other holds the same belief. Importantly, walking creates an environment where this sort of trust building is more voluntary, compared to motorized travel. Coordination in car driving requires much more top-down regulation and punitive incentives, leaving little room for voluntary action and trust building. Therefore, the social public space that persons create when walking is qualitatively different than the one made on the road, and more favorable to trust building and sociability.

The capacity for sociability is relevant for determining types of spaces where positive social contact may occur. Sociability and respect for others is dependent on public spaces where contact is possible (Kohn 2004). For example, streets with heavy car traffic impede the formation of social capital, whereas streets with light traffic encourage social interaction (Appleyard, Gerson, and Lintell 1981). While most types of mobility occur in public space, it is still the case that the more meaningful type of contact can only occur where public space is accessible and designed for pedestrian mobility. For example, local shopping streets mobilize aesthetics, collective memory, and traditional forms of social interaction that engender local identity and membership which are endangered by economic modernization and global consumer culture (Zukin 2012). In sum, walking offers a unique opportunity for exercising the capacity for sociability.

Walking as Achievement

One of the things that contribute to our well-being is achievement. While walking is a mundane activity and not intuitively perceived as achievement, in a small way, it is an achievement, and as such, it does contribute to our well-being. An achievement, in the perfectionist sense, is something that is a result of the successful execution of our human capacities, especially the capacity to will (Bradford 2015). An achievement is not the sort of thing that just pops into existence. Rather, it is the result of a process and it culminates in a product. The product might be inherent to the process, for example, a dance performance is both a process and a product. Moreover, an achievement is difficult. If it were easy, it would not be an achievement. But it is not sufficient that the activity is difficult. There must be some contribution on the part of the agent, that is, the process needs to cause the product.

Achievements are valuable, according to this view, when they are a product of our capacity to will ourselves to overcome difficulty to obtain an intrinsically worthy goal. Every human being has a will, and its exercise is entirely inevitable in every activity in which we engage. Yet engaging in difficult activity requires that we excel in exercising our will. It follows that difficult activity, according to perfectionism, is intrinsically valuable because it is the excellent exercise of the will to engage in intrinsically valuable and difficult activities (Bradford 2015, 119–22). In other words, by exercising our will to engage in these types of activity, we are contributing to our well-being because we are developing, exercising, and perfecting one of our essential human capacities.

It seems that according to this view, walking, at least for the able bodied, is a mundane accomplishment, not an exceptional achievement. Riding a bike, jogging, navigating public transport are all activities that at least on the face of it require more physical exertion or physical discomfort. Nevertheless, there is a sense in which walking is an achievement, even if it may not be exceptional like writing the Great American Novel or running a marathon. To the extent that walking is an exercise of our will, walking may be considered an achievement, however small. Walking requires effort and perseverance (Middleton 2010, 583) especially compared to alternative automated travel modes, like the car. In other words, walking requires willpower. If walking becomes one’s prominent mode of mobility by choice, it requires the willpower to sustain this choice. Recall that an achievement is a process and a product, characterized by difficulty, willpower, and the intrinsic value of the activity. Walking manifests all of these components: it is a process—walking, it is a product—the walk, it requires willpower, and it has intrinsic value, that is, it has value in and of itself. If walking were merely instrumental, that is, as a way to get from A to B, then it would not be superior to other travel modes in terms of well-being. Yet walking is an embodied activity that in its ideal form produces all kinds of benefits, like sociability, knowledge, understanding, and creativity. It is therefore intrinsically valuable and worth achieving as such.

The upshot is that walking can count toward (modest) achievement, in at least three ways. First, walking is the personal achievement of an embodied activity. Second, walking is an achievement in the sense that it requires willpower to overcome the desire to travel with more effortless modes, such as the car or the e-scooter. Third, because walking creates environmental and societal benefits such as reducing air pollution and promoting sociability, it is an achievement of the good of morality, by caring about others and actively contributing to their well-being. A comparison of walking and driving on these three parameters shows that walking is more conducive to well-being: driving is less of a personal achievement because it requires less physical exertion, it requires less willpower, and it contributes to the reproduction of a fragmented public space that minimizes sociability. ¹

One important implication of the discussion on walking and objective well-being is that the types of walking discussed previously (walking as knowing, walking as creativity, walking as achievement, and so on) often overlap. Walking thereby provides an opportunity for a combination of our capacities because it creates a favorable environment that enables the pedestrian to engage simultaneously with different objective goods such as knowing, sociability, creativity, and achievement. This will be relevant when we consider the relationship between types of walking and types of walking environments, discussed shortly, as part of a more general discussion on the implications for design and future research.

Implications for Walkability Design and Research

Walkability—the interaction between the physical environment and the propensity to walk—has been on the political, public, and academic agenda for the last twenty years. The term “neighborhood walkability” was introduced into the lexicon of the transportation and public health literatures in the early 2000s, at a time when researchers began to suspect that the design characteristics of the neighbourhood might play an important role in either promoting or restricting physical activity. It is still being used today in “health-place” research to describe the features of neighborhoods that are collectively thought to promote physical activity or to be associated with physical activity–related health outcomes (Hajna et al. 2017, 2; Shashank and Schuurman 2019) or to explain the interaction between the environment and subjective feeling (see Introduction).

While there have been advancements in understanding the links between the walking environment, the propensity to walk and how one feels when walking, the argument advanced in this paper is that there is also room for research on the objective aspects of well-being and on environments which promote this type of well-being. This paper aims to broaden the account of well-being generated through walking, by arguing that well-being is a function not only of how one feels, but of how well one develops and exercises one’s human capacities. Furthermore, walking contributes to well-being by promoting the development and exercise of our human capacities, to engage with objective goods such as knowing, creativity, sociability, and achievement. The upshot for research and design is that it is important to account for objective goods such as knowing, creativity, sociability, and achievement when we think about the environments that may promote them. The discussion in this paper thus invites us to think about how to design environments that encourage capacity exercise and development.

To address this issue, let us identify the types of discussions within the walkability agenda that this paper will be useful for. In a recent conceptualization of walkability, Forsyth (2015) categorizes recent discussions on walkability into three main categories: walkability as the necessary conditions for walking: traversability, compactness, attractiveness, and safety; walkability as the outcomes of walkable environments: making places lively and sociable, enhancing transportation options, or inducing exercise; walkability as a proxy for better urban places: as a holistic/multidimensional solution to a variety of urban problems. The insights of this paper belong to the first category—walkability as the conditions for walking. Discussions in this category already argue that walking environments should be convenient, interesting, safe, illuminated, and sociable (Al-Hagla 2009; Gehl 1987; Speck 2012, 2018). The insights of this paper, that walking can generate a well-balanced combination of our capacities, point to the importance of thinking more systematically about the types of environments that trigger different combinations of capacity development to improve objective well-being. The paper therefore proposes interventions in the first category of discussions on walkability—the conditions and means for promoting walking.

Preliminary research suggests that bland, monotonous façades, like those of box stores in the suburbs, or large, monolithic structures such as banks, courthouses and business towers have two negative implications for walking: first, they reduce the propensity to walk. Second, they change the quality of walking. People walk more quickly in front of blank façades. Compared with an open, active façade, people are less likely to pause or even turn their heads in such locations (Gehl 2010, 36–44). They simply bear down, not making eye contact, and try to get through the unpleasant monotony of the street until they emerge on the other side, hopefully to find something more interesting (Ellard 2015, 109). In contrast, highly articulated building facades at the street level with nooks, corners, alcoves, small setbacks, steps, and ledges are correlated with a street’s liveliness and sociability (Mehta 2009). In terms of design, windows on the street, active street frontage, and the quantity of street furniture, increase pedestrian activity compared to environments that lack in these features (Ewing et al. 2016).

Studies of both extreme and moderate forms of environmental deprivation show that boring environments can generate stress, impulsivity, lowered levels of positive affect, and risky behavior like jaywalking (Kaler and Freeman 1994; Valtchanov and Ellard 2015). Boring environments are therefore disadvantageous for persons’ well-being for two reasons that pertain to the development and exercise of our human capacities. The first is that they discourage walking. People do not linger and engage in any social activities where there is nothing to do or see in their surroundings (Mehta 2009), reducing the potential to develop and exercise the capacity for sociability. The second is that monotonous, bland walking environments may alter the way persons develop and exercise their capacities when walking in them. Boring environments lower cognitive performance (Williams-Goldhagen 2017), dampening the prospects for attaining the perfectionist goods of curiosity, knowing, and understanding, thereby lowering objective well-being.

Interestingly, the “Cognitive Dissonance” theory in psychology suggests that experiencing temporary stress or dissonance may actually help jumpstart the perfectionist goods of learning, knowing, and creativity. When faced with dissonance, persons are motivated to search for new information in their environment to resolve the dissonance (Festinger 1962). This might point toward the need to be in occasionally uncomfortable or boring surroundings that will challenge us to come to new understandings about the world around us. In terms of urban design, planners may want to encourage walking by making it attractive to people, but paradoxically perhaps, making the environment too attractive or too comfortable may discourage the kind of knowing that is achieved through dissonance. Mystification and surprise along one’s path are valuable, but only so long as two conditions are met: the environment maintains the pedestrian’s sense of orientation, and the mystery or discord must in itself have some form that can be explored and in time be apprehended (Lynch 1960).

While a full account of conducive environments for learning and curiosity is beyond the scope of this paper, two points are worth mentioning. Boring or chaotic environments have a negative long-term effect on stress and cognitive performance (Williams-Goldhagen 2017). Streetscapes that are amenable to walking contain a visual attraction every four seconds at eye level, unnecessary clutter is removed, and lighting is designed for night-time usage (Gehl Architects 2009). In terms of research, walkability indices in future research could include measures that explicitly account for the quality of the walking environment in terms of its vibrancy; the distribution of positive and balanced visual stimulation at eye level, the quality of lightings and so on, to create favorable conditions for developing the capacities for knowing and curiosity.

Second, we might want to make a distinction between a boring environment and a dissonant environment. The former is not conducive to learning because it does not generate new information. A dissonant environment, on the other hand, may be categorized either as an environment that provides a good balance between different types of new information (sights, sounds, smells, and movement), or as an environment characterized by an imbalance between different types of new information, such that it causes chaos and discord (Ferdman 2018) that are ultimately distracting and not conducive to learning.

So while it is generally the case that boring environments are disadvantageous to walking, environments that cause dissonance could possibly prompt the exercise of our capacities in ways which will be advantageous to our well-being. Research in walkability, therefore, may find it useful to make finer distinctions between boring environments, chaotic environments, and dissonant-yet-stimulating environments and their ability to promote capacity development.

Another implication of highlighting objective well-being elements in the design of walking environments is that walking environments do not necessarily need to be distinguished into separate walking types, in contrast to previous findings. In her comprehensive analysis of walkability definitions, Forsyth (2015) finds that walkable environments for transportation and recreation purposes sometimes overlap but often do not, concluding that designers and planners need to be conscious of different purposes for walking, and subsequently that we need to design different kinds of walking environments to achieve these distinct purposes (Forsyth 2015, 288). Forsyth’s distinction between transport and recreation points to a conceptual distinction between instrumentally valuable activities and intrinsically valuable activities. Transport is thereby implicitly treated as instrumentally valuable, because it is predominantly about getting from A to B. In turn, associating walking for transport with instrumental goals prioritizes the metric of “flow capacity,” whereby pedestrian space is best when pedestrians can move in an unimpeded manner with as much space as possible (Lo 2009). This metric, in turn, leads to a design sensibility in which walkable transport environments are designed to enable the shortest, smoothest walking trip possible, rather than an environment which encourages the capacity to know, understand, be curious, and so on.

The insights of this paper regarding the ways in which walking enhances the development and exercise of human capacities challenges the conclusion that environments for pedestrian transport and pedestrian recreation should be separate. Walking as an activity in which persons develop and exercise their capacities opens up the possibility to a design sensibility, whereby walking environments can provide opportunities for capacity development regardless of trip purpose. Walking as knowing and walking as creativity can occur as a positive side effect of walking for instrumental activities, especially if walking becomes a more prominent mode of travel encouraged by conducive design and policy implementation.

The distinction between downtown centers and residential areas is a case in point. One of the common concerns about downtown centers is that while they are vibrant during the day when suburban commuters are in town, the streets may be empty, less vibrant, less inviting, and perhaps even dangerous in the evening. Design remedies can take the form of more lighting in parks, pedestrian traffic lights at more intersections and more community events (Werner et al. 2018, 616). The implication for design is that it is possible and desirable to blur the distinction between walking as an instrumental activity and walking as a flourishing activity and create a more integrated walking environment that captures both types of activities.

Nevertheless, while the design of walking environments is important, the regulatory environment also has a significant impact on the propensity to walk. Even when environmental conditions are favorable (i.e. safety and aesthetically pleasant landscape), there are many policy factors that may encourage or deter persons from walking. In line with Forsyth (2015, 275), policy making and comprehensive solutions with other policy spheres are necessary to make a walkable place. Examples of complementary solutions include pricing of relevant alternatives (from automobile use to recreation centers), policies and programs supporting walking such as education programs or walking school bus schemes (Deehr and Shumann 2009) and taking into account the characteristics of the population such as preferences, motivations, demographics, and so on.