What’s one of the most under- appreciated benefits of walkable cities? Money – and lots of it.

The multibillion-dollar North American convention industry, for instance, always seems to hold meetings in the same half-dozen cities: New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, New Orleans, Montreal. That’s because delegates want to wander around an accessible and engaging downtown before and after their long days spent in cavernous, beige rooms.

New York’s newest urban-walk sensation, the High Line Park, has led, directly or indirectly, to billions in adjacent real estate development and business activity. And this is a long, skinny park built on an abandoned, elevated rail line where there’s not much to do – except walk.

On a recent Jane’s Walk (the annual 80-country event featuring guided neighbourhood walks in 500 cities) in downtown Toronto, more than two dozen people ambled around an area known as Wellington Place, a once garbage-strewn, soot-covered no man’s land of factories and parking lots just west of the financial district. Over the past decade, this area has exploded with new development – sophisticated mid-rise condos, hotels, restaurants and shops.

Much of the new money moved in after the rejuvenation of once sadly neglected Victoria Memorial Square, a park that avoided being paved over only because it’s an 18th-century military burial ground. Happily, the biggest issue these days is the waste left by the upscale pedestrians walking their dogs in front of the swish Thompson Hotel.

Walking is also the new darling of exercise gurus. A new book from New York Times fitness columnist Gretchen Reynolds has a surprising message for the desk-bound but health-conscious: the first 20 minutes of light to moderate exercise confers the greatest health benefits.

Conversely, sitting for even an hour (not to mention, eight) makes your heart, lungs, muscles and other major organs very unhappy. As Reynolds puts it: “Humans are born to stroll.”

It seems clear that more walkers would reduce spiralling health-care expenditures related to the fallout from a sedentary lifestyle: diabetes, heart disease and obesity – to name but a few.

So, getting more people out of chairs and onto sidewalks and park paths seems to make a lot of economic sense.

Now, if only municipalities would get the message. Toronto, for instance, has been slicing its already modest funding for improving what’s happening on city sidewalks and in urban parks – despite the fourth consecutive year of large budget surpluses. The city is also permitting the expansion of highrise clusters with little community-centred activity at ground level – the shops, restaurants and other amenities that keep neighbourhoods lively.

Instead, cities like Toronto need to make their streets and parks much more engaging for walkers. Doing so is likely to bring more of the sorts of benefits almost everyone can support – health and wealth. IE

© 2012 Investment Executive. All rights reserved.