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Researchers have found that seemingly trivial encounters with the minor characters in our lives — the random person at the dog park or the barista at your coffee shop — can affect feelings of happiness and human connection on a typical day. https://n.pr/2YlOMZ0 Want To Feel Happier Today? Try Talking To A StrangerHappiness, says one researcher, is the sum of many positive moments throughout the day. Something as simple as a friendly chat in the elevator can boost your mood. So put down your phone and try it.npr.org2,81211:18 PM – Jul 27, 2019Twitter Ads info and privacy878 people are talking about this

Research has shown that walking is good for your physical and mental health, and building cities and spaces that are connected and walkable provide increased opportunities for social interaction. Transportation expert Jeff Tumlin has a TEDx Talk on Sex, Neuroscience and the City pointing out how vital these links are.

NPR.com’s Paul Nicolaus explored current research on every day interaction on the street.  Elizabeth Dunn and Gillian Sandstrom from the University of British Columbia studied the impact of customers talking to staff in coffee shops, with half of the people asked to interact with staff, and half not to interact. They found that those that had limited interaction with the coffee shop staff  increased their general mood and increased happiness.

“The same researchers found that these seemingly trivial encounters with the minor characters in our lives — the random guy at the dog park or the barista at our local coffee shop — can affect feelings of happiness and human connection on a typical day.”

Studies also found that when walking brief eye contact “increased people’s sense of inclusion and belonging”,  and can trigger the neural release of the peptide hormone oxytocin, called the “cuddle chemical” in Jeff Tumlin’s TEDx talk.

No one likes feeling invisible when someone walks past. The Germans even have a term for it — wie Luft behandeln, which means “to be looked at as though air.” And while people may not necessarily want to talk to everyone they meet on the street or in the coffee shop,  psychologists have ascertained that even brief eye contact increases the sense of inclusion and belonging.

As University of Chicago’s behavioural scientist  Nicolas Epley describes it “The mood boost of talking to strangers may seem fleeting, but the research on well-being suggests that a happy life is made up of a high frequency of positive events, and even small positive experiences make a difference. Happiness seems a little bit like a leaky tire on a car. We just sort of have to keep pumping it up a bit to maintain it.”

You can take a look at Jeff Tumlin’s TEDx talk on the benefits of  social interaction on the street here.

Fifty-two years ago this May Expo 67 opened on two man-made islands in Montreal. The 20th century was about World’s Fairs, and this fair with the theme “Man and His World” attracted fifty million visits in its six month run. At the time Canada’s population was only 20 million people.

Several notable buildings were constructed including Buckminster Fuller and Shoji Sadao’s geodesic dome for the United States pavilion, and Moshe Safdie’s iconic “Habitat” as an example of prefabricated concrete dwelling construction.

Visitors had “passports” and obtained stamps at various pavilions. People walked from pavilion to pavilion and used the “minirail” an elevated automated system that connected the various areas. In many ways this event put Canada on the international map.

The legacies of the Fair were classic 20th century achievements that included transportation infrastructure:  Montreal’s Decarie autoroute was built, as well as the Hippolyte-Lafontaine bridge and tunnel. But people also got used to walking to a train station that connected them to the two islands and the exhibits, and then used the elevated minirail service for shorter connections.

In many ways it was a fifty year old precursor to how to transport large populations of people in and out of cities in North America. And get those people to walk.

The Montreal Expo baseball team derived their name from the fair, and the former world’s fair site is now Jean-Drapeau Park, named after the mayor of Montreal at the time of the fair.

This YouTube video below highlights the opening of the fair. You may recognize a few of the faces in the video, and enjoy the classic 1960’s camp. There is also  attached a video from British Pathe that shows the built form and design of the buildings and the transportation (the mini-rail)  on the two islands.

Of course it makes intuitive sense that active transportation users and bus commuters would frequent retail businesses more often than those constrained by  vehicles. But it is always better to have the hard facts on this data, and researchers in the City of London England have done just that.

Transport for London (TfL)  in Great Britain has released a new study  with some staggering statistics about what happens when street improvements are made to facilitate walking and cycling. Time spent on retail streets increased by 216% between shopping, patronizing local cafes and sitting on street benches. Retail space vacancies declined by 17%.  London’s Business Improvement Districts are 90% in favour of more street improvements to facilitate pedestrians, and 85% in favour of better facilities for cyclists.

But the best news, and this is also in line with research conducted in Toronto and in New York City “people walking, cycling and using public transport spend the most in their local shops, spending 40% more each month than car drivers”.

The study for TfL was conducted by a researcher at University College London’s Bartlett School of Planning. Footfall and retail sales in unimproved areas were compared to shopping areas that had implemented improvements such as wider sidewalks, increased outdoor seating, public parks and pedestrian crossings.  Findings showed that retail rents  increased by 7% in improved areas, and office space rents increased by 4%, suggesting that the street improvements translated into much more desirable spaces. You can download the entire report, which also has some great business case references for retail areas  here.

Local business improvement districts in London are also understanding the benefits of increased pedestrian and cycling clientele, with 90% seeing the advantages of pedestrian improvements and 85% wanting more cycling facilities in their area.

Will Norman, London’s Walking and Cycling Commissioner, said: ‘With businesses across London really struggling to survive, we have to do everything we can to support them.‘The evidence is clear – adapting our streets to enable more people to walk and cycle makes them cleaner, healthier and more welcoming, which encourages more people to shop locally.‘The benefits of designing streets around pedestrians and cyclists and reducing car use can be enjoyed by everyone and will help ensure the future of our high streets.’

And of course, more pedestrians and more cyclists on separated facilities, improved street design and slower speeds make roads safer and encourage travel to retail businesses by active transport, and make retailers more money.  This BBC video below has been just released talking about Vision Zero and how to make the streets of London safer for everyone.

Image Sandy James

If you think the car is king in Metro Vancouver and in Canada generally, you need to have a visit to Australia where both the law and the pedestrian crossing times solidly put the pedestrian as a second class citizen to vehicular traffic.

The Guardian disclosed that “Pedestrians across Australia are pressing the button at traffic lights for no reason, most days of the week..In Sydney, pedestrian crossings in the CBD have been automated since 1994, leaving millions of commuters to futilely press placebo buttons for nearly 25 years…”

And if you are standing at an intersection in downtown Sydney, you feel like you are standing there for an inordinate amount of time waiting for a light to change.

There are a lot of walkers~there are 1.27  million trips a day in the downtown, with 1.06 million by foot.  The State Department in charge of the wait times have thankfully shortened  the automated wait times from 110 seconds to 90 seconds, but here is what is strange~an official from the State said “when traffic volume is lower the pedestrian wait time is less than 90 seconds. There are also many locations in the CBD where traffic signals operate with a double cycle, meaning pedestrians only wait 45 seconds to cross the road.”

But no one is talking about the fact that Sydney’s CBD is full of walkers and quite congested at the intersections at peak times. Shouldn’t pedestrians have more green time when foot traffic volume is higher? And shouldn’t pedestrians’ time be counted as valuable if not more so than vehicular traffic?

Darren Davis with Auckland’s Transport Council has crunched the numbers of the economic viability of walking. His work shows that eight billion dollars of New Zealand’s  gross domestic product is generated within a few city blocks, and it is “walkability  of a city centre directly impacts its economic viability and economic prosperity.”

That is part of what London is doing in the Mayor’s new Transport Strategy as reported in Price Tags. Aiming for an 80 per cent modal split for walking,cycling and public transport by 2041,  London is becoming more conducive for walking by making wait times at intersections as low as 40 seconds.

Cities with walkable downtowns are attractive for businesses to locate, and pedestrians are the economic driver to make those areas thrive. It is time to cost the pedestrian experience for comfort, convenience and safety in the downtown as paramount to that of the vehicle, signalling a shift in accountability and livability of the downtown core. The chart below illustrates the pedestrian wait times in cities in Australia and elsewhere.