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The only thing better than a city with edgy cultural spaces, great dance floors, delicious food and lush scenery is one where exploring all of that stuff is as easy as a walk in the park.
And we don’t just mean figuratively. Walkability is one of the key attributes of any great city, so, as part of Time Out’s annual city survey, we asked locals to rate how easy it is to explore their hometown on foot.
While Melbourne was crowned the overall best city in the world in this year’s Time Out’s Best Cities with Intrepid Travel, topping the ranks for walkability was South Korea’s capital, Seoul. When asked how they’d rate their city’s walkability, a whopping 93 percent of respondents said either ‘good’ or ‘amazing’.
This result proves that a city doesn’t necessarily have to be compact to be ‘walkable’. Sure, the top 10 features plenty of small cities – Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm and Helsinki, to name a few – but Seoul’s impressive rating comes down to its pedestrian-friendly infrastructure and safety.
Take the Cheonggyecheon Stream – this 10km stretch of water in downtown Seoul is flanked by a clean, well-planned walkway, which passes not only lots of metro stations, but also connects some of the city’s top attractions. Then there’s Seoullo 7017, a 1074m-long elevated park which was built on an old inner-city highway.
In second place (separated from Seoul by only 0.08 percentile points) was a rather more quaint capital, Edinburgh. The Scottish city also accrued an approval rating of 93 percent when we asked locals about its walkability.
Edinburgh’s solid standing as a good place to get around on two feet might seem a bit odd given all its cobbled streets and hilly climbs, but walks are actually what plenty of visitors to this city come to do – we’re talking trudging up to Arthur’s Seat or to the tippety-top of Carlton Hill.
Landmark attractions like the Old Town, Edinburgh Castle and the National Galleries of Scotland are all within comfortable walking distance of each other, too.
👣 Check out Time Out’s full list of the 20 most walkable cities in the world.
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Did you see that two South American cities have been ranked among the world’s best for green space?
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