Walk a new route through your neighborhood

Most people use perhaps five percent of the streets within a mile of home, because routes ossify around destinations. To walk a new route through your neighborhood needs no destination at all, just a rule that overrides habit, and the result is regularly surprising in a place you thought you knew.

Why walk a new route through your neighborhood is worth an hour

A simple procedural rule removes the decision-making that would otherwise steer you back onto familiar ground. Walking a street you have only ever driven is a genuinely different experience too: at walking pace you see doorways, gardens, dates on buildings and shopfronts that are invisible at thirty miles an hour.

How to walk a new route through your neighborhood step by step

1. 1

   Pick a rule and follow it

   Left at every junction, or first turning you have never taken. The rule replaces your habitual choices.

2. 2

   Set a time, not a destination

   Twenty minutes out, then navigate home. Removing the destination is what makes it exploration.

3. 3

   Walk streets you have only driven

   Walking pace reveals detail that driving completely erases. Start with your most-driven route.

4. 4

   Look above ground floor level

   Old signage, building dates and original architecture survive above the shopfronts nobody looks past.

5. 5

   Follow anything that looks like a shortcut

   Alleys, cut-throughs and footpaths between streets. These are the parts maps show poorly and locals never use.

Tips to get more out of it

• Take a phone for navigating home, but resist opening it until you start the return leg.
• Photograph anything you want to look up later. Building dates and odd street names are worth investigating.
• Vary the time of day as well as the route. The same streets are genuinely different places at seven in the morning and seven at night.

Ways to mix it up

If your area is small, extend the radius and treat it as a series of loops over several weeks. If you want a purpose, combine it with looking up the history of anything you find, which turns an aimless walk into an ongoing project.

Walk a new route through your neighborhood: frequently asked questions