How much of your city have you actually explored?
Ask people what share of their city they have walked and most guess high. The real figure is usually small, because daily life runs on the same handful of routes. Measuring it properly is surprisingly motivating.
Why the guess is always too high
You know your city through a few corridors: home to work, home to the shops, the route to a friend's house, the town centre. Everything between them feels familiar because you have driven past it or seen it on a map. But familiar is not walked. Most of the streets one block off your usual routes, you have never set foot on.
That is not a criticism. It is just how routine works. The point of measuring is to see the shape of it.
Ways to measure it
- By hand. Print a map, highlight what you remember walking. Slow, and memory is generous, but it works for a small area.
- Street by street. Count streets walked against the total. Precise, but it needs a list of every street and a lot of bookkeeping.
- By area. Treat the city as ground to be covered, and measure the area you have been close enough to see. This is what a fog of war map does, and it is the easiest to keep up because it is automatic.
FOG clears a circle of roughly 120 metres (about 400 feet) around every place you walk and adds it up. The ledger shows the total area you have unfogged, and the share card shows how much of the city you are in you have lit. The number moves fast at first, then slows, which is exactly how real exploration feels.
Getting a real starting number
A fresh install starts at zero, which is honest but not very interesting. If you have used Google Maps Timeline or recorded walks as GPX files, FOG Unlimited can import them, and your city fills in with years of past walking in one go. That gives you a true baseline: here is everywhere you have been, here is everywhere you have not.
Read more on the Google Timeline import page.
What to do with the number
The most useful thing about seeing your explored share is the dark part. It points at streets you have never walked within a mile of your door. People start taking the next street over, walking home a different way, picking a new neighbourhood each weekend. The number goes up, but the point is the walking.
Set a realistic goal. In a large city even a few per cent is a lot of ground. Whole neighbourhoods are a better target than the whole map; see how to walk every street for a plan.
About FOG
No account, no sign-up and no cloud. The map lives only on your phone, and you can export a GPX backup at any time. Exploring is free, and FOG Unlimited is one purchase that adds the higher ranks, all five character paths and history import. It is a phone app, on iOS and Android.
Questions people actually ask
How can I see what percentage of my city I have walked?
Use a cumulative map that measures covered area. FOG shows the area you have unfogged and, on its share card, how much of the city you have lit.
Why is my percentage so low?
Because daily routines use a few corridors. Most people have walked a small share of their own city, which is exactly what makes the map motivating.
Can I include walks from before I installed the app?
Yes, with FOG Unlimited. It imports Google Timeline exports and GPX files.
Start with a dark map.
FOG is free to explore. No account, no subscription, and your map never leaves your phone.
free to explore · one purchase unlocks everything · never a subscription