“Movement is essential to building our knowledge of the world, and the best form of movment for building this knowledge is physical locomotion; walking is probably the best of all because the timescales that walking affords us are the ones we evolved with, an in which information pick-up from the environment most easily occurs.”
-Shane O’Mara, In Praise of Walking: The new Science of how we walk and why it’s good for us
Currently reading In Praise of Walking: The new science of how we walk and why it’s good for us by neuroscientist Shane O’Mara. The text is extremely engaging and covers a great deal of terrain including the brain’s ‘GPS system’ and it’s influence on human navigation, connections between the vast dispersal of humans across the planet and our unique propensity to walking, the physical and biological rewards of walking, the need to prioritize walking over vehicle flow and more.
“There are great potential walking futures in cities for us all. What we need are acts of imagination fusing the needs of walkers with the expertise of town planners and that of psychologists and neuroscientists. In turn, science, imagination and evidence need to be turned into policy and from that point translated to beautiful, interesting streets of ease, variety and quality. Road-crossing designs, street furniture, the texture and type of footpaths and pavements, the presence of cars and buses- these all act for or against our ability to walk in cities.”
-Shane O’Mara, ‘In Praise of Walking: The new science of how we walk and why it’s good for us’ (pg 101-102)
