The Fastest Cities in the World on Two Feet
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 05.02.07 | 9:17 AM ET
Researchers who secretly studied pedestrians in 32 cities around the globe found that people in Singapore walk the most swiftly, covering 60 feet in 10.55 seconds. Copenhagen came next at 10.82 seconds, followed by Madrid, Guangzhou and Dublin. New Yorkers ranked 8th at 12 seconds flat. (Come on, New York, we know you can do better than that. Let’s get a move on.) Not surprisingly, technology is blamed at least in part for the increasingly frenetic pace of life. The radio show Marketplace notes a correlation between cities where people are walking faster than they did a decade ago and economic growth. The two cities where walking speeds have increased the most in the last decade: Singapore and Guangzhou, China.