Movement Inc. Official Home Page
When I spent a week in Singapore in May, we routinely clocked in 15,000-16,000 steps a day.
The kicker. I was in a Breg boot. 45 days after Achilles tendon reconstruction.
My foot was swollen after. But while walking, it was just so damn comfortable. The first thing that hits you is the width. It's not just a space to walk. There's some green on either side, and it's covered in sections. The path is even. There's space between you and the traffic. Then there are the bollards, the ramps, the parks. Footpaths cut straight through parks lined with trees. There are pull-up bars in them. Someone decided that a person walking to work might also want to train, outdoors, for free, on the way. There are chairs, so you can sit before you carry on. It is hot. But between the shade and the green, you manage.
Back in Madras, my step count is 2000-3000 steps. Mostly in the gym. And pacing about at home. And I top it off with work on the VersaClimber.
Same body. Same month. Same boot. Six times the steps.
As someone who needs to enjoy activity, I just can't bring myself to enjoy walking in Madras. The beach road is empty occasionally and walking on that road is fine. But most of the time, it's just not fun. There's construction, sewage, terrible bikers and crummy traffic. My neighborhood has wide enough roads but even that gets eaten up by parked cars and construction debris. There's plenty of entrepreneurial buzz on the footpaths here too. But the footpaths weren't usable to begin with. Some might as well make a buck off it.
Which is why I am incredibly skeptical of any push to make urban India walkable. Sticking a footpath on a main road with an afterthought of a park at an MRTS station is not the kind of design that makes cities walkable. That's tokenism. Walkability is the ease with which you can traverse a city by foot from the moment you step out your door. Width. A border. Cover. Somewhere to sit. A rule about parking that someone enforces.