Why you should Move Closer to Work!
1. You Live Longer!
By walking to work instead of driving you can significantly reduce the risk of dying. Inactivity is actually the fourth leading case of mortality around the world! For people over 60, walking only 15 minutes a day can reduce the risk of dying by 22%! The ideal reason to move closer to work!
2. It makes you happy!
In the study they looked at happiness levels between those who commute to work by car and those who walk to work. What they found is that someone with a one-hour car commute needs to earn 40% more to be as happy as someone who has a short walk to work!
They also found those who switched from a long commute to a short walk, reported an increase in happiness levels on par with falling in love! What better reason to move close to work than that?
3. It helps you lose weight!
Although common knowledge, not many people take advantage of that the fact that walking 30 minutes a day burns at least 200 calories, but it also reduces the risk obesity by 4.8%. In fact there’s a lot of health reasons to make you move closer to work.
4. It increases active use of space
In more walk-able neighborhoods, people are far more likely to make use of parks and public squares. In Copenhagen, Denmark, when they made the city more pedestrian friendly, the number of people using open spaces more than tripled! If your work was located nearer a green space, would you be tempted to move closer to work?
5. Polution Reduction
A fairly obvious one here, but if you can start walking to work instead of driving, you’re helping save the planet! Even if only 1 in 5 of us stopped using a car and walked to work instead, we would reduce greenhouse gases by 20%.
6. Increases Values
By reducing road traffic, you in turn increase the foot traffic. This in turn leads to an increase in foot fall in the local shops. More business, more money, values increase!
7. It reduces healthcare costs
If you’re walking to work, you’re getting fitter than you would by driving. If only a quarter of us switched to walking to work instead of driving, we’d recduce the strain on our already heavily burdened NHS.
8. Minimise Land Use
Roads take up an immesive part of the real estate in the UK. By moving to more compact sidewalks and bike paths, it would allow not only a denser population, but more green space.
9. It cuts Ambient Noise
When Paris had it’s first car-free day back in 2015, the sound levels dropped 3 decibels! Paths and walking are much more enjoyable when there’s not loads of engines running in the back ground.
