How far do you walk? 1/2 mile, 1/4 mile, 6 minutes, 30 minutes? What is the distance you walk before you start to think that maybe driving or taking a bus makes more sense?
It turns out that walking distance has more to do with what you are looking at, and less to do with how far you need to go.
Walk Appeal promises to be a major new tool for understanding and building walkable places, and it explains several things that were heretofore either contradictory or mysterious. It begins with the assertion that the quarter-mile radius (or 5-minute walk,) which has been held up for a century as the distance Americans will walk before driving, is actually a myth.
The series goes on to discuss the measurable items that add (or detract) from walk appeal. It isn’t just a matter of building spaces that create a sense of mental well being. Walk appeal has commercial implications. Think of THE JOBS… won’t anybody consider the JOBS that can be won by places that consider walk appeal over places that dimiss it?