A new report from the Brookings Institution shows that the D.C. metro area has the most “walkable places” per capita of any American city — one for every 264,000 people, beating out even New York City for walkability. Visiting Fellow Christopher B. Leinberger says that the Washington region could serve as the model for the direction the country’s other metro areas are heading over the next generation. The Associated Press already picked up on the story.

Why does Washington walk more than any other city? The report credits the D.C. area with currently having the second highest absolute number of walking urban places with 20, compared to two in 1987 (Georgetown and Old Town Alexandria). It also lays out the major reasons why District residents favor the walking lifestyle:

(1) the success of the Metro rail system and (2) the aggressive use of “overlay zoning districts” that allow and promote walkable urbanism around Metro stations. Other reasons include the region’s strong economic growth over the past 15 years when the trend toward walkable urban development began, the high educational level of the population (the highest percentage of college graduates of all metro areas in the country according to the US Census in 2006), given the apparent, though not yet proven, propensity of the highly educated to prefer walkable urban development. It is also assisted by the large percentage of younger adults in their 20s and 30s that migrate to the region for employment opportunities and for the walkable urban lifestyle. Younger adults appear to have a higher propensity, though not proven, for walkable urbanism as well.

So younger, more educated people walk more than others? Maybe, but we’d have to say in our experience, Washington is a pretty equal-opportunity walking town. We see just as many people who are over 40 and from a variety of education and income levels walking in D.C. as we do younger college graduates.

The report names Capitol Hill, Adams Morgan, Georgetown, West End, Friendship Heights and Dupont Circle as model “walkable places” in the District. It also identifies Columbia Heights as a neighborhood that is “not yet at critical mass but probably will be over the next decade,” comparing it to neighborhoods like Mid-Wilshire in Los
Angeles, Crossroads in Kansas City and Royal Oak in the Detroit metropolitan area.

So why do you walk?

Photo by maxedaperture

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