Yahoo Lifestyle If You Want to Live Longer, Move to a Neighborhood With This One Thing
Want to live a longer, healthier life? You might want to reconsider where you're living—and not because it makes you more or less likely to catch a cold.
According to a recent University of Washington study, living in a more "walkable" neighborhood really does mean that its residents stay physically active and walk more.
The research, which was published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, followed 11,000 sets of twins and found a strong link between how pedestrian-friendly city a place is and how much the twin living there was moving.
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Their findings? For every 1% increase in a neighborhood’s "walkability,"—think: sidewalks and pedestrian-friendly bridges—walking levels went up by 0.42%. If you scale this up, a neighborhood being 55% more walkable than another means its inhabitants walk 23% more. That's approximately 19 extra minutes of walking per week per resident, which can seriously add up for overall health—especially when you consider how sedentary most Americans are.
Case in point: Research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, which found that because people living in unwalkable areas less active overall, they're more likely to develop obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. They also have a predicted 10-year risk of cardiovascular disease, lower "good" cholesterol levels, and higher systolic blood pressure than those living in pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods.
Related: This Is the Shortest Amount of Time You Need to Walk and Still See Results
Further, each hour you do walk, which adds up easily in these areas—think: your daily commute to work, or to grab a cup of coffee—can actually prolong your life by about six hours, according to a recent Griffith University study. By that logic, living in a walkable area would theoretically boost your lifespan by six years every three weeks (since the previous study associated it with 19 extra minutes of walking per week per resident).
The Griffith University research, which was published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in November 2024, also found that if the least active Americans over 40 walked as much as the most physically active ones—which amounts to about 160 minutes daily at 3 miles per hour—they could add a whopping 11 years to their entire lifespan.
Related: New Study Reveals Exactly How Many Minutes to Walk Per Day to Add Years to Your Life
This data echoes much of what we've heard from the health community before: A previous study found that you're twice as likely to die early if you sit for over 12 hours a day. But you know what helps combat that? Take a five-minute walk every five hours. Meanwhile, it turns out only 75 minutes spent walking per week can lower the risk of mortality overall.
Considering this eye-opening data, and the fact that a sedentary, physically inactive lifestyle also comes with an increased risk of everything from cardiovascular disease to dementia, taking a walk—and living in a neighborhood that makes that easy to do regularly—is sounding pretty good right now, isn't it?
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Sources
"Association between neighborhood walkability and physical activity in a community-based twin sample." American Journal of Epidemiology.
More dense, populated neighborhoods inspire people to walk more." ScienceDaily.
"Association Between Neighborhood Walkability and Predicted 10‐Year Cardiovascular Disease Risk." Journal of the American Heart Association.
"Physical activity and life expectancy: a life-table analysis." Griffith University; British Journal of Sports Medicine.
