Take A Lousy Walk

What's the best bad walk you've ever taken?

This Tedx talk on making cities more walkable — the “general theory of walkability” — is perfectly reasonable, making lots of great walking points from a city planning perspective. I saw it via Kottke, who highlighted this passage:

In the typical American city, in which most people own cars and the temptation is to drive them all the time, if you’re going to get them to walk, then you have to offer a walk that’s as good as a drive or better. What does that mean? It means you need to offer four things simultaneously: there needs to be a proper reason to walk, the walk has to be safe and feel safe, the walk has to be comfortable, and the walk has to be interesting.

These four rules certainly make sense, and I don’t disagree. I endorse them all! Kottke writes that they help explain “why every time I get to walkable city (Tokyo, Rome, NYC, Paris), I am instantly like, yes!! This! This is a walk.”

Fair enough.

And yet …

I couldn’t help thinking about how I kinda enjoy bad walks.