NYT Op-Ed Addendum

I'm in the New York Times this morning!

My piece introduces the idea of bringing European walking rights (in which citizens are legally permitted to walk over private land) to the U.S.

If you've read the article and would like to learn more, here are a few lines and thoughts that didn't make it into the final cut.

Americans don't walk enough

This is no surprise to anyone. Our towns and cities have not been planned well and do not promote good civic, spiritual, and healthy lifestyles. Let's just focus on the healthy thing for a second: It's recommended that folks should be walking 10,000 steps a day (an Amish person gets 18,000 steps a day, I believe), but we Americans only walk an average of 5,117 steps a day, far fewer than the averages of the other countries the researchers studied, including Australia (9,695), Switzerland (9,650), and Japan (7,168). [1]

The United States of Private Land

By my count, America is 72 percent privately owned, the great majority of which is off limits to walkers. Even many of our public spaces, like national parks, are unroamable since we're often forced to keep to trails and designated campsites. Therefore, America, home of the free, is ultimately unroamable. An American right to roam law — that properly balances concerns for the privacy and property of landowners — could open sections of our nation’s 614 million acres of grassland pasture, 408 million acres of cropland, and approximately 444 million acres of privately owned forest. [2]

Walking in the woods is better for you than walking on roads

This is obvious to anyone, but it's important to point to good research that legitimizes common sense. In a pair of studies published in 2015, Stanford graduate student Gregory Bratman found that volunteers who were directed to walk through a green section of the Stanford campus had less anxiety, better memory, and experienced less “morbid rumination” than the volunteers who walked alongside heavy traffic in Palo Alto. [3]

The Right to Roam Society 

What's next for the presently-nonexistent "right to roam" movement in the U.S.? It makes sense to me to create a Right to Roam Society, or an American chapter of the U.K.'s "Ramblers." The Ramblers are a walking advocacy group in the U.K., which is influential and powerful and which fights for the walking rights of ordinary citizens. A similar organization ought to be developed in the U.S. that would bring together folks who ought to think about ways we can throw our weight around. There's absolutely no chance for a national law anytime soon. But there are plenty of battles to be won on the state level, like with opening up private coastlines so that the public can access them. Right to roam activists and lawyers and writers could work together on winning these battles and opening up the country, albeit in a piecemeal fashion

Would a right to roam law even work in the U.S.?

One of the things I don't address in the piece are the challenges (outside of the constitutional challenges) that might get in the way of a successful American right to roam program. When you look at the countries with generous right to roam systems (Scotland, Norway, Sweden, Finland), you can't help but notice that these are countries that have achieved something close to "democratic magnificence." These countries don't have the same disparity of wealth problems that we do. They're impressively egalitarian. And they have strong social safety nets. There just isn't the same abject third-world poverty in these countries that we find in parts of the U.S.

So perhaps a country first needs to satisfy the basic needs of its countrymen and women before it can think about a national right to roam law. Having walked through an impoverished section of Oklahoma, I acknowledge that a right to roam system simply wouldn't work there. There's already too much theft and guns and crime and paranoia. There, a right to roam system wouldn't make any sense.

You can also argue that American towns and cities and suburbs have been built in such a way that many citizens wouldn't get to take advantage of a right to roam law since there are no worthwhile green spaces within walking distance. What green spaces are there for your typical suburbanite, who's surrounded by nothing but more suburban homes and backyards. City dwellers, too, would be largely unaffected by such a law. It's sad to say, but a right to roam law would do a lot of nothing for a great many Americans.

Other right to roamers

There are very few Americans talking about the right to roam. As far as I can tell, my piece is the first in the mainstream press. There are, however, several law scholars who have written about other countries' right to roam laws, and who often make the case that we should consider the possibility of bringing it to the U.S. Here's a little bibliography of essential works:

1. Jerry Anderson is a Drake University Law Professor. He wrote a nice overview of the English and Welsh roaming law while commenting on it's feasibility in the U.S. "Britain's Right to Roam: Redefining the Landowner's Bundle of Sticks."

2. John Lovett is a Loyola Law Professor. He wrote a solid background of the Scottish roaming law. "Progressive Property in Action: The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003.”

3. Brian Sawers is a scholar in residence at Emory University. He wrote a piece on the history of roaming rights in the U.S. “The Right to Exclude from Unimproved Land.”

4. Malcolm Combe is a law scholar from Scotland and one of the foremost experts on the Scottish right to roam. He has a blog here.

How much public land does your state have? 

Normally, I can find an answer to most any question that comes to mind with a bit of relentless research. But one thing I couldn't figure out was how much "public land" each state had. It was easy to find how much federal land was in each state and how much state land was in each state. But I could not find anything that showed how much land was publicly owned in each particular state. I had to do all that data-compiling myself. It will probably look like a mess on this blog, but hopefully you can still see how much public land your state owns. This statistic was important because I wanted to see which states had a lot of public land and which states had just a little. This would help me determine which states have decent access to good roaming land because public land = potentially good roaming land. The unit of measurement I've used here is the acre. [4]

State	Federal Land	State Land	Total Public Land	Total Acreage in State	Percent of State as Public Land	Rank for % owned
Alabama	844,026	48,164	892190	32,678,400	3%
Alaska	223,803,098	3,386,702	227189800	365,481,600	62%	3
Arizona	28,064,307	64,090	28128397	72,688,000	39%	8
Arkansas	3,151,685	54,466	3206151	33,599,360	10%	21
California	45,864,800	1,624,216	47489016	100,206,720	47%	7
Colorado	23,870,652	1,238,488	25109140	66,485,760	38%	9
Connecticut	8,752	206,988	215740	3,135,360	7%
Delaware	29,864	26,071	55935	1,265,920	4%
DC	8,182	0	8182	39,040	21%	13
Florida	4,599,919	758,031	5357950	34,721,280	15%	16
Georgia	1,474,225	92,880	1567105	37,295,360	4%
Hawaii	820,725	33,780	854505	4,105,600	21%	14
Idaho	32,621,631	58,922	32680553	52,933,120	62%	4
Illinois	411,387	480,818	892205	35,795,200	2%
Indiana	384,365	172,180	556545	23,158,400	2%
Iowa	122,076	71,234	193310	35,860,480	1%
Kansas	272,987	163,975	436962	52,510,720	1%
Kentucky	1,094,036	45,180	1139216	25,512,320	4%
Louisiana	1,325,780	43,851	1369631	28,867,840	5%
Maine	211,125	98,298	309423	19,847,680	2%
Maryland	197,894	134,539	332433	6,319,360	5%
Mass	61,802	353,889	415691	5,034,880	8%
Michigan	3,633,323	293,703	3927026	36,492,160	11%	19
Minnesota	3,491,586	287,029	3778615	51,205,760	7%
Mississippi	1,546,433	24,591	1571024	30,222,720	5%
Missouri	1,635,122	207,219	1842341	44,248,320	4%
Montana	27,003,251	46,035	27049286	93,271,040	29%	11
Nebraska	546,759	135,464	682223	49,031,680	1%
Nevada	59,681,502	146,225	59827727	70,264,320	85%	1
NH	798,718	231,164	1029882	5,768,960	18%	15
NJ	179,374	444,170	623544	4,813,440	13%	18
New Mexico	26,981,490	196,677	27178167	77,766,400	35%	10
NY	104,590	4,264,102	4368692	30,680,960	14%	17
NC	2,429,341	221,843	2651184	31,402,880	8%
North Dakota	1,736,611	34,792	1771403	44,452,480	4%
Ohio	305,641	173,887	479528	26,222,080	2%
Oklahoma	701,365	70,031	771396	44,087,680	2%
Oregon	32,614,185	108,499	32722684	61,598,720	53%	5
Pennsylvania	617,339	297,170	914509	28,804,480	3%
RI	5,157	9,630	14787	677,120	2%
SC	846,420	90,167	936587	19,374,080	5%
South Dakota	2,642,601	101,987	2744588	48,881,920	6%
Tennessee	1,273,175	168,617	1441792	26,727,680	5%
Texas	2,998,280	629,339	3627619	168,217,600	2%
Utah	34,202,920	150,758	34353678	52,696,960	65%	2
Vermont	464,644	70,570	535214	5,936,640	9%
Virginia	2,514,596	71,704	2586300	25,496,320	10%	20
Washington	12,176,293	121,983	12298276	42,693,760	29%	12
West Virginia	1,133,587	177,133	1310720	15,410,560	9%
Wisconsin	1,793,100	156,508	1949608	35,011,200	6%
Wyoming	30,013,219	119,559	30132778	62,343,040	48%	6
US	623,313,931	18,207,318	641521258	2,271,343,360	28%

Citations in this blog post
[1] “Pedometer-Measured Physical Activity and Health Behaviors in U.S. Adults.” Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise: October 2010 - Volume 42 - Issue 10. (Page 1822-23).

[2] “Major Uses of Land in the United States, 2007.” USDA. http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/188404/eib89_2_.pdf (Page i)./ “Forest Resources of the United States, 2012.” USDA. http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/pubs/gtr/gtr_wo091.pdf (Page 6).

[3] Gregory N. Bratmana, Gretchen C. Daily, Benjamin J. Levy, James J. Gross. “The benefits of nature experience: Improved affect and cognition.”Landscape and Urban Planning 138 (2015). http://spl.stanford.edu/pdfs/2015/Bratman%20LUP.pdf (Page 41).

[4] “Statistical Report of State Park Operations: 2013-2014.” National Association of State Park Directors. (Page 9) The table compiled acreage from states including state parks, recreation areas, natural areas, historic areas, among others. / “Federal Land Ownership: Overview and Data.” Congressional Research Service. December 29, 2014.