How to talk about walkability’s benefits without triggering skepticism

A 2019 ARUP report, Cities Alive, lists 50 benefits for walkability. This strategy is common among advocates for healthy, mixed-use urban design: provide as much evidence as possible until policy makers agree.

But there is a risk. Research suggests that when advocates list too many benefits, the impact may backfire, leading to skepticism rather than persuasion. In this article, I offer a practical strategy to avoid this pitfall.

Consider some of the benefits ARUP lists. For someone uninitiated in the topic, this may seem dubious:

• Promoting active lifestyles
• Reducing crime
• Fostering social interaction
• Strengthening community identity
• Supporting local businesses
• Enhancing creative thinking and productivity
• Promoting tourism
• Shrinking congestion costs
• Maintenance cost savings
• Improving mental health

ARUP’s report—and others like it—implicitly follow the “knowledge deficit model” of science communication. In this model, the primary reason people do not already agree with experts is a lack of information. The solution is to provide as much information as possible, and that, “audiences… will be grateful for this.” The knowledge deficit model is considered at minimum insufficient in the science communication literature, and can be counterproductive. 

Carlson and Shu find that listing benefits can help convince people, but only up to three benefits. Beyond this point, a longer list leads to skepticism. Similarly, a review of ten studies finds that people often reject offers that seem too good to be true, because they assume there must be some hidden cost. Sivanathan and Kakkar find that people are less convinced by lists of claims that include both strong and weak evidence, because the weak evidence dilutes the impact of stronger evidence. 

ARUP’s list of benefits has a certain uncomfortable resemblance to that ascribed to magical health remedies. For example, magnetic bracelets can reportedly treat:

• Arthritic disorders
• Carpal tunnel
• Gout
• Inflammation
• Tendonitis 
• Surgery recovery
• Weight loss
• Menopause symptoms
• Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
• Migraines
• Depression
• Diabetes

Notice how all the benefits seem less likely with each additional claim. 

And yet, it would be foolish not to mention the multiple real benefits of walkability just because it seems too good to be true. How can advocates communicate these benefits without eliciting skepticism?

Nothing is a panacea—Except for things that are

When people use the words “silver bullet” or “panacea,” it is usually to say there is no such thing. But some things really are panaceas. If advocates want to express the full value of walkability, they need to explain when and why this could be true.

Consider physical activity. It too has a surprisingly long list of benefits. It reduces risk of heart disease, diabetes, strokes, flu, and many cancers. It makes people smarter and happier. It strengthens bones and muscles, assists with weight management, boosts the immune system, and improves sleep quality. It even makes people more attractive and improves sexual performance. 

How is it that one solution can improve so many seemingly unrelated systems? 

The answer is that physical activity is not adding something new. Rather, it restores normal function. Humans evolved to be highly active daily, and every subsystem in our body adapted to this reality. If we remove this keystone, all of these subsystems malfunction. The diverse benefits are really just problems avoided.

Sleep and a healthy diet are also panaceas, because our bodies evolved to depend on them. Real panaceas restore something that, when absent, would lead to system failure. A control rod in a nuclear reactor is a kind of panacea, when measured in problems avoided. Fixing a structural pillar in a building’s basement is also a panacea. 

Walkability as a panacea

Walkability restores a gap essential to human life: the ability to use our bodies to do useful things. 

Advocates should list the diverse benefits of walkability. However, they should clearly position this list in terms of this central keystone on which everything else depends, so the list does not seem like a coincidental set of separate claims. Focus on providing a mental model in which walkability is a structural pillar on which many other things depend. If you remove a structural pillar, the consequences are of course manifold.

To explain the benefits, focus on a small number of causal mechanisms that lead to the diverse results. I recommend the following: 

• Useful walking: Humans evolved to exercise only when it is useful, which is why practical walking (to work and groceries) leads to many health and psychological benefits.
• Exposure to people: When people have useful reasons to be outside, they are more likely to meet each other, leading to the benefits related to social ties, safety from crime, vibrancy, idea sharing, and chance business encounters.  
• Spatial efficiencies: People walking need less space than cars, which enables higher concentrations of economic activity and destinations. This explains why walkable areas offer greater access to jobs and opportunities, lower traffic per person, and greater economic productivity.
• Cost efficiencies: People walking don't depend on complex, expensive 4,000-pound machines to move. This explains the lower transportation costs, higher upward mobility, and reduced pollution and noise. 
• Desirable streets: When the success of businesses and buildings depend on attracting people on foot, they have a financial interest in creating attractive streetscapes where people enjoy being (unlike in car-centered business parks, where no such incentive exists). This explains benefits related to attractive, memorable destinations that offer a high quality of life and attract visitors and talent. 

This approach avoids trivializing walkability as a mere policy gimmick, with a long list of benefits that may fade at scale, like the latest Ted Talk. Rather than a new fad, it is a central requirement of how people have lived since the dawn of civilization, and in a sense, how humans have always lived. What we are talking about is restoring the ability of humans to use their bodies as humans. Of course it has multiple impacts.

Author and planner Jeff Speck has said that he is reluctant to “say walkability is the cure-all.” The reluctance is understandable, but in an important sense, this is unavoidable. His books list a wide variety of benefits. 

Better to acknowledge the skepticism head-on. Walkability is a cure-all in the sense that sleep and physical activity are cure-alls. Walkability simply restores something essential to human life: the ability to use our bodies to do useful things.