Walkability is the new metric

Do you live in a walkable community?

Take the fittest and healthy people around you and you would see one thing that is common among them – They love walking. Physical exercise has never been more important than now. If you live in a community that has ample space and facilities or you to walk, consider it a blessing. Walkability is a measure that shows how a community can be beneficial for health, environmental, and economic benefits. Factors that influence walkability include the presence of good quality footpaths that are safe for pedestrians, walkways that connect homes to shops, parks, and other places of convenience.

Walking is the easiest, cheapest way to stay physically fit. While we all know the benefits of walking, here are some just to remind you why you should walk more.

1. Physical: Walking for just 30 minutes every day can increase your cardiovascular fitness, strengthen bones, reduce excess body fat, and boost muscle power and endurance. It can also reduce your risk of developing conditions such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, and other lifestyle diseases. All the more reason for you to walk more.
   
2. Mental: Walking can help your mental health. Studies show it can help reduce anxiety, depression, and change a negative mood. It can also boost self-esteem and reduce symptoms of social withdrawal. To experience these benefits, aim for at least 30 minutes of brisk walking or other moderate-intensity exercises three days a week.
   
3. Walking also helps improve your emotional state of mind. Did you know walking releases natural painkilling endorphins to the body which is one of the emotional benefits of exercise? When walking you sweat out things in your mind too and release the negative energy and built-up stress. Walking gives you enough space of mind to think and sort out things.
   
4. Walking has cognitive benefits too. Recent studies have shown that 20 to 30 minutes of exercise before undertaking a mental task may quicken reaction time and sharpen decision making. While you may not actively observe, walking can help improve your eyesight, make you more conscious of hearing, improve your physical response to stimuli, and make you more aware.

When we know that walking is beneficial, why don’t we build communities that encourage walking? While we cannot make a lot of changes in the public areas, we can definitely make small changes in our communities. Worldwide, many communities have embraced pedestrian quality as a gold standard to encourage community life. There are many ways in which we can make a community walkable:

• Create sidewalks that have enough space for real people to walk.
• Make walkability a priority by adding walking paths around faculties towards grocery, parks, play area, main entrance.
• Ensure high-quality pathway, with antiskid material, correct lighting of sidewalks
• Reduce obstructions, give resting areas at frequent intervals
• First priority to pedestrians for crossings, traffic management
• Add social hubs for resting, talking, drinking water, and make it worthwhile for people to walk

Walkability in a community encourages people to run/walk in order to take care of their health, and simultaneously reduce the carbon footprint. Your community needs to make space for enough social interactions to help maintain a vibrant atmosphere.

Walkability at Vijayanagara EcoVillage 
8-11 ft wide walking tracks next to plants, trees, bioswales
Close to 3 KM long walking track
Walk next to a beautiful clean lake
Resting areas with park benches, social hubs
Drinking water fountains, restrooms

Do you think walkability is an important for our communities? Share your experiences with walking and how it benefited to you.

Vijayanagara EcoVillage- Walkable community

If you like walking, you would love our community opportunities at Vijayanagara EcoVillage. You would love the way we incorporated walkability as one of the topmost priorities to encourage commute in the community. While creating walking tracks is just one part, we ensured you would walk next to gardens, green trellis, rest under tall trees, have drinking water from the fountains ar regular intervals, park benches to rest, indoor games at social hubs to encourage you to take up new hobbies and many more. The fact that we are designing Vijayanagara EcoVillage as a sustainable community for water, food is an added advantage. To know more about this community, write to us today – Connect@estate.one