Walking Maps

Updated July 2024

I’ve always thought it would be a fun ‘side quest’ in life to try to walk as much of the planet as possible. Exploring cities on foot is really the only way to explore every hidden corner, and walking 15-20 miles per day will keep you so healthy that you feel immortal. So over the past decade I’ve GPS-tracked 50,000 miles of walking in dozens of countries and cities.

At first I considered literally doing ‘every single street’ in which I cross off every street of a given city. I haven’t fully abandoned this goal, but the thought of endless residential neighborhoods, freeways and frequent dead ends makes the idea unappealing. The goal of this project is to enjoy the experience, and doubling-back on a cul-de-sac is not fun. So at the moment, this project’s goal is to walk ‘every interesting street’ of my favorite cities, with ‘every street’ TBD.

I’m still deciding what approach I want to take to sharing this data. The drawback here is privacy, so I’ve abandoned plans to make an interactive map. For now I’ll just manually update this page with a few of my favorite maps, like some sort of art project.


To log the data, I have my iPhone passively track me in the background 24/7, which is easier than manually tracking my walking and also serves as evidence that I walked all these streets.

People frequently message me asking how to do this. It takes a surprising amount of work to have your phone passively track you, so for most people I’d recommend just using a fitness tracker like Strava each time you go out. However, if you’re committed, here are the steps.

  • Install Arc (and maybe Arc Mini for backup) on your iPhone. The app will track you passively and use an AI model to clean up and classify the data.
  • On a ~weekly basis, manually clean up the remaining data the model couldn’t sort out.
  • When you’re ready, export the weekly or monthly JSON files to your computer and run this code to strip out everything but the walking.
  • You now have a JSON file with just your walking data. You can visualize it on this site.

New York City

NYC is one of the best cities in the world for walking. So far, I’ve walked about 20,000 miles in NYC, of which maybe 1,500 miles are unique streets – about 20% complete.

San Francisco

Over the past decade I’ve walked around 7,000 miles in SF, of which maybe 700 miles are unique streets, putting me at around 70% completion. If I were to walk full time, I could finish every street in this city in about a month. Realistically, I likely won’t finish it for a few more years.

Mexico City

I’ve walked about 2,500 miles here, but the city is so big that it’s just a single digit percent. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if I hold the walking record for this city.

Los Angeles

I’ve never lived in LA, but dozens of day trips have resulted in me walking more of the city than most people who live here. My goal right now is to walk every street of all the interesting neighborhoods and then connect them together.

Austin

Oaxaca


Thanks for checking this out! I plan to expand on this walking thing eventually, already have 10,000 words worth of walking thoughts jotted down in my notes over the years I’d like to condense and add… Let me know if you liked this page/project and if there’s enough interest I’ll prioritize it!