by Alex Marshall, Editor, Spotlight on the Region
Before the subway, before the commuter train, before the car, before the bicycle, before the pedalcab, bus or Segway, there was the foot. When New York City was young, say during its first two centuries, people must have walked a lot more than they do now, precisely because there were few other options.
I mention this because I believe some New Yorkers are reviving this old trend. While New Yorkers have always walked more than anyone else is this country, what lately seems to be coming into vogue is what I might call "the long walk." Eschewing the subway, bus or taxis, people are opting to walk long distances and to do so on a regular basis.
I base this trend on a completely unscientific sample of various friends and acquaintances I have bumped into recently that are doing it.
The first person I encountered doing this was Randy Swearer, who until 2004 was Dean of the Parsons School of Design. Swearer surprised me one day by mentioning in passing that he walked each day from his home in Brooklyn Heights, over the Brooklyn Bridge, and up to Parsons near Union Square - an hour's walk, each way. I was flabbergasted, but Randy by then was quite blasé about it.
"That walk from Brooklyn Heights is probably the thing I miss most about NYC," said Swearer, who recently moved back to Austin, via email. "It started because I couldn't sleep one night and once the dawn broke I just thought I've got to get out of this apartment.
"So I walked to work, and saw all of this amazing stuff: delivery trucks unloading weird junk, phenomenal light plays on the buildings, fabulous wall postings and graffiti, wonderfully eccentric people, etc. It was like going to the theater, and I had been missing all of it for years. So I started walking to work, and after a few months liked it so much that I walked home too, about 8 miles total.
"The city is an intensely rich accretion of culture," said Randy, sounding like the professor he is, "but the average resident of NYC experiences it in these abstracted moments, such as popping out of a subway or zoning out in a taxi and forgetting everything you've seen on the way to a destination. They never really have a chance to take it all in. So as you can tell, I liked walking to work! Plus I lost 14 pounds!"
Since hearing Swearer's tale for the first time, I've encountered a string of long walkers, none of whom I would have predicted in advance. My friend Andy, after more than a decade of using the subway to get from his home on East 17th Street to his finance job near Wall Street, began walking the entire distance. It takes 50 minutes each way, he said, just 10 minutes more than using the subway, when you include walking to the subway stations and waiting on the platforms. Recently his office moved to Midtown, and he's now walking there and back.
Another long walker is Jonathan Waxman, the executive chef of Barbuto at West 12th Street in the meatpacking district. Waxman often walks there from his home at 89th Street on the West Side. A cross-town walker is, or was, Rossana Ivanova, who used to walk every day to her job at the Council on Foreign Relations at 68th and Park Avenue from the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 42nd Street and Eight Avenue.
"When I walked I knew exactly how long it would take me, and I could time myself for the various meetings, events and appointments," said Ivanova, who is now vice president for development at Regional Plan Association. "I used to wear sneakers and change shoes in the office."
Ivanova mentions something many long walkers do, which is timing and reliability. Unlike a yellow cab, the Q train or the M1 bus, your feet always are there when you need them, and they usually work pretty much the same. Consequently, walkers quickly learn how long it takes to walk to a regular destination, and can plan their lives accordingly.
Not all long walkers are to-work walkers. One friend of a friend, who mostly works at home, walks almost everywhere, I am told. She will typically walk from her apartment in Greenwich Village to, say, a show at Lincoln Center, rather than take a cab, bus or train.
So is long walking a trend? In this land of ever rising demands on our time, including work itself, it would be surprising if more people were taking extra time simply to walk places. But I suspect they are. There is something about walking, particularly after work, that allows the mind to expand its joints, to decompress, in other words. That doesn't happen as easily in a train, bus or cab, or even the private car. Walking limbers both the body and mind, and people are taking time for it. If this isn't a trend, it should be.
The great thing about New York City's mass transit system is that it makes all this walking possible, whether short, medium or long distance. Generally speaking, almost all urban walking environments are built around mass transit, because it's natural to build homes and business tight together around transit stops. Significant amounts of parking, which automobile-oriented cities require, break up any continuous walking environments that might emerge. So even the long walkers who consciously avoid the subway are in a sense taking advantage of it.
Suburban long walkers are hard to find, because it is rare the person who will walk several miles through parking lots, highways crowded with cars, and isolated patches of grass and retention ponds in order to walk from home to office park.
As the weather cools, and walking becomes less of an immersion into a bath of perspiration, perhaps more of us will try the long walk. I hear it's habit forming. I live in Crown Heights in Brooklyn, which is a bit too far away for a long walk to Union Square. But maybe I'll try the long bicycle ride.
Before the subway, before the commuter train, before the car, before the bicycle, before the pedalcab, bus or Segway, there was the foot. When New York City was young, say during its first two centuries, people must have walked a lot more than they do now, precisely because there were few other options.
I mention this because I believe some New Yorkers are reviving this old trend. While New Yorkers have always walked more than anyone else is this country, what lately seems to be coming into vogue is what I might call "the long walk." Eschewing the subway, bus or taxis, people are opting to walk long distances and to do so on a regular basis.
I base this trend on a completely unscientific sample of various friends and acquaintances I have bumped into recently that are doing it.
The first person I encountered doing this was Randy Swearer, who until 2004 was Dean of the Parsons School of Design. Swearer surprised me one day by mentioning in passing that he walked each day from his home in Brooklyn Heights, over the Brooklyn Bridge, and up to Parsons near Union Square - an hour's walk, each way. I was flabbergasted, but Randy by then was quite blasé about it.
"That walk from Brooklyn Heights is probably the thing I miss most about NYC," said Swearer, who recently moved back to Austin, via email. "It started because I couldn't sleep one night and once the dawn broke I just thought I've got to get out of this apartment.
"So I walked to work, and saw all of this amazing stuff: delivery trucks unloading weird junk, phenomenal light plays on the buildings, fabulous wall postings and graffiti, wonderfully eccentric people, etc. It was like going to the theater, and I had been missing all of it for years. So I started walking to work, and after a few months liked it so much that I walked home too, about 8 miles total.
"The city is an intensely rich accretion of culture," said Randy, sounding like the professor he is, "but the average resident of NYC experiences it in these abstracted moments, such as popping out of a subway or zoning out in a taxi and forgetting everything you've seen on the way to a destination. They never really have a chance to take it all in. So as you can tell, I liked walking to work! Plus I lost 14 pounds!"
Since hearing Swearer's tale for the first time, I've encountered a string of long walkers, none of whom I would have predicted in advance. My friend Andy, after more than a decade of using the subway to get from his home on East 17th Street to his finance job near Wall Street, began walking the entire distance. It takes 50 minutes each way, he said, just 10 minutes more than using the subway, when you include walking to the subway stations and waiting on the platforms. Recently his office moved to Midtown, and he's now walking there and back.
Another long walker is Jonathan Waxman, the executive chef of Barbuto at West 12th Street in the meatpacking district. Waxman often walks there from his home at 89th Street on the West Side. A cross-town walker is, or was, Rossana Ivanova, who used to walk every day to her job at the Council on Foreign Relations at 68th and Park Avenue from the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 42nd Street and Eight Avenue.
"When I walked I knew exactly how long it would take me, and I could time myself for the various meetings, events and appointments," said Ivanova, who is now vice president for development at Regional Plan Association. "I used to wear sneakers and change shoes in the office."
Ivanova mentions something many long walkers do, which is timing and reliability. Unlike a yellow cab, the Q train or the M1 bus, your feet always are there when you need them, and they usually work pretty much the same. Consequently, walkers quickly learn how long it takes to walk to a regular destination, and can plan their lives accordingly.
Not all long walkers are to-work walkers. One friend of a friend, who mostly works at home, walks almost everywhere, I am told. She will typically walk from her apartment in Greenwich Village to, say, a show at Lincoln Center, rather than take a cab, bus or train.
So is long walking a trend? In this land of ever rising demands on our time, including work itself, it would be surprising if more people were taking extra time simply to walk places. But I suspect they are. There is something about walking, particularly after work, that allows the mind to expand its joints, to decompress, in other words. That doesn't happen as easily in a train, bus or cab, or even the private car. Walking limbers both the body and mind, and people are taking time for it. If this isn't a trend, it should be.
The great thing about New York City's mass transit system is that it makes all this walking possible, whether short, medium or long distance. Generally speaking, almost all urban walking environments are built around mass transit, because it's natural to build homes and business tight together around transit stops. Significant amounts of parking, which automobile-oriented cities require, break up any continuous walking environments that might emerge. So even the long walkers who consciously avoid the subway are in a sense taking advantage of it.
Suburban long walkers are hard to find, because it is rare the person who will walk several miles through parking lots, highways crowded with cars, and isolated patches of grass and retention ponds in order to walk from home to office park.
As the weather cools, and walking becomes less of an immersion into a bath of perspiration, perhaps more of us will try the long walk. I hear it's habit forming. I live in Crown Heights in Brooklyn, which is a bit too far away for a long walk to Union Square. But maybe I'll try the long bicycle ride.
@RegionalPlan