There are cities where you can walk for twenty minutes without noticing.
And there are others where, after five minutes, you're already wondering why you didn't drive.
For a long time we've assumed that mostly comes down to the person.
Today I think we should also look at the city.
Because many of the decisions we believe are personal may have actually started long before we walked out the door.
A narrow sidewalk.
A difficult crossing.
A street with no trees.
An avenue designed mainly for cars.
On their own, these look like small details.
Together, they can end up deciding how we move.
And here's something I find especially interesting:
two places can be exactly 500 meters apart and feel completely different.
On a map, the distance is identical.
For the person walking it, it isn't.
What can make the difference?
How walkable it is. Having sidewalks isn't enough. What matters is their width, continuity, accessibility, and how easy it is to cross a street without every intersection becoming an obstacle.
Shade and comfort. With rising temperatures, trees, vegetation and shade are no longer decorative details. They can determine whether walking remains a real option.
What happens along the way. Shops, services, active façades, public spaces and people can make 500 meters feel much shorter.
The connection to public transit. A metro station can be very close on the map and very far in everyday experience if getting to it is hard.
The chance to stay. A good city doesn't just let people pass through. It also creates reasons to stay, to meet, to shop, to rest, and to actually live in it.
And when all these conditions start coming together in the same place, something even more interesting happens.
People walk more.
They stay longer.
Shops and services appear.
New flows of people are generated.
Some places start turning into centralities.
And over time, the value of that environment can change too.
That's why I don't think this conversation should matter only to urban planners or architects.
It should also matter to those of us who develop, invest, operate stores, build infrastructure, or try to anticipate where a city will grow next.
Because we can build:
an excellent building
a great store
a metro station
a mixed-use development
But the experience of whoever arrives at them begins long before they walk through the door.
Maybe that's why part of a property's value doesn't lie inside the property.
It lies:
in the street that connects it
in the shade along the way
in the shops and services nearby
in the public space
in how walkable it is
in its connection to public transit
For decades we've put enormous effort into helping people cross our cities faster and faster.
Maybe we should start asking a different question:
Are we building cities that people only want to pass through, or places where they also want to walk, stay and live?
