Etc.

May 29, 2007

Watch out, slowpokes: cities with the speediest walkers

The idea of taking a leisurely stroll in Singapore is something of a foreign concept, judging from the research results posted on Planetizen, a planning and development website. The city-state has the fastest walkers in the world, researchers equipped with stopwatches found in their study of pedestrians in 32 global cities. The researchers timed 35 men and women in each city to see how long it took them to travel 60 feet over a designated stretch of pavement. Compared with the results from a similar study conducted in the 1990s, the researchers concluded that people are walking 10 percent faster today. The cities with the fastest walkers and the average time, (in seconds), it took them to cover 60 feet:

1. Singapore 10.55
2. Copenhagen, Denmark 10.82
3. Madrid 10.89
4. Guangzhou, China 10.94
5. Dublin, Ireland 11.03
6. Curitiba, Brazil 11.13
7. Berlin 11.16
8. New York 12.00
9. Utrecht, Netherlands 12.04
10. Vienna 12.06