[MUSIC] People walk faster in cities.
Studies dating back to 1976 prove
a positive correlation between population size and walking speeds.
The question is, why?
Each study iteration seems to build on the last,
adding a new explanation for why people move their feet
faster in cities than in smaller towns.
I'm gonna walk you through three different ways of approaching the answer.
But as you'll see,
there's another explanation and it may prove that
researchers have been overthinking this from the beginning.
[MUSIC].
The first study that looked into this was conducted by
psychologists Mark and Helen Boorstin in 1976.
They decided to time the walking speeds of people in
15 cities and towns in six countries.
The test measured the speeds of passersby over 50 unobstructed feet.
They looked at big cities like New York, Munich, and Athens.
They also measured pace in smaller towns,
the smallest having a population of just 365 people.
They published their conclusions in the journal Nature.
What they found is that people walk faster in locations where there are more people.
The Boorstins attributed that to intense interpersonal crowding.
Walking fast is a way to limit social interference.
Another 1976 study backed up the conclusion that people in cities do in fact walk faster.
This one by famous psychologist Stanley Milgram.
However, Milgram found a different reason why.
He found that sensory overload causes a social withdrawal response.
Meaning, people in cities are bombarded with ads, traffic,
and crowds so they try to swiftly move through
it all in an attempt to reduce the bombardment of their senses.
If you've ever been to Times Square,
you'd probably agree with the notion of wanting to move
fast to get out of there and never come back.
[MUSIC] In 1989 and 1999,
two studies added a caveat.
They weren't convinced that
only cognitive overload explains why people move faster in cities.
One study was led by geographers DJ Walmsley and Garrett Lewis in 1989.
In that one, they timed pedestrians in 10 cities and towns in England and Australia.
Robert Levine from Cal State at Fresno led the other in 1999.
Their findings suggest that both culture
and economics played a role in average walking speed.
The Walmsley and Lewis study concluded by saying,
"When a city grows larger,
wage rate and cost of living increase and with that the value of the resident's time.
People in cities have a higher cost of living,
so they have to make more and so time is money." Better get moving.
The Levine study also looked at economics but took a more macro approach.
They began by looking at what they deemed "pace of life" in 31 cities around the globe.
The team then measured average walking speeds in
those cities and compared that to their pace of life findings.
The top 10 fastest cities were Rome, Nairobi, Paris, Tokyo,
New York, Frankfurt, London,
Bern, Amsterdam, and Dublin being the winner.
What they found is that, yes, population matters,
but so does the country's GDP,
purchasing power parity, and exchange rates.
The results of the '89 and '99 studies were backed up
by a 2006 study led by psychologist Richard Wiseman.
However, his study shows us how our world is changing.
This study compared findings from a study in '94 and concluded that across the board,
city dwellers were walking 10 percent faster than they were 12 years prior.
The fastest rate of change was seen in Asia where people were moving 30 percent faster.
Researchers credited that to Asia's booming economy.
The title of the fastest walkers in the world was given to Singapore.
So what conclusions can be drawn from all this research?
Generally speaking, we can say that people move
faster in cities for a combination of reasons.
Things like population size over stimulation of our senses and economics.
But there is another study that takes a different simpler angle.
In 1992 researchers Peter Wirtz and Gregory Reese set out to take
another look at the 1976 study which attributed faster walking speeds to crowding.
Wirtz and Reese don't think interpersonal crowding has much to do with walking speeds.
They claim people walk faster in cities because of who lives in cities.
Cities are younger than towns.
They're also home to more young men who tend to walk the fastest of any demographic.
They were so confident in their findings,
they said they could even predict the average walking pace of a city saying,
"Average speed predicted from age structure on
population size did not differ significantly in their slopes.
It, therefore, seems unnecessary to invoke other factors in addition
to age composition to explain differences in average walking speeds of pedestrians."
Meaning, people move faster in cities because that's just where the youthful legs are,
and all you needed to guess the average walking speed of
a city is the demographics of that city.
So if there was a race to determine which location walks the fastest,
the winner would be a big city with large economic growth,
but the speed may or may not be because of those factors.
It may be because that's exactly what younger people who walk faster are looking for.
[MUSIC] Hey, everyone.
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