Those who have traveled abroad will have found – it is very noticeable, for example, in places of constant bustle like London or New York – that the speed at which pedestrians walk differs significantly between cities. In fact, this variable has been the object of analysis on several occasions.
The first investigation dates from 1976, when the pair of psychologists Marc and Helen Bornstein analyzed the activity of fifteen localities around the world during good weather days to discover a clear correlation between the size of the population and the speed of the stride. The Bornsteins, who published their work in the journal Nature , attributed it to a need to reduce “social exchange” , not to waste time socializing, but there are other hypotheses.
While some specialists, such as Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, believed that it is a strategy to dampen the stimulus saturation characteristic of large metropolises, others have directly associated it with per capita income. Because when we get paid more for our work, time is money.
Another study carried out in 1999 by the North American psychologist Robert Levine with 31 cities confirmed that the most hasty steps corresponded to the cities of the most prosperous countries. The fastest pedestrians were in Dublin, Amsterdam, Zurich, London, Frankfurt, New York, Tokyo, Paris, Nairobi, and Rome ; all (with the exception of Nairobi), rich cities, regardless of the number of inhabitants or their density.
Ultimately, statistical studies confirm that the speed of the march depends on three factors : the GDP of the country to which the city belongs, the purchasing power of urbanites and, as a cultural factor, their level of individualism.
