How to walk every street in your city
Walking every street in a town or city is one of the most popular long projects in walking. It sounds simple and it is not: the hard part is not the walking, it is knowing which streets you have done. Here is how people actually finish it.
Why people do it
Most of us walk the same few routes for years. A project to cover every street breaks that loop. You end up on the dead end behind the school, the lane behind the shops, the street you have driven past a thousand times and never walked down. People who have finished a whole city usually say the same thing: they know their place in a way they did not before.
It also scales. A small town can be done in a season. A large city can take years, and plenty of people who start with a whole city switch to finishing one neighbourhood at a time, which is a perfectly good goal.
Step one: pick a boundary you can finish
The single most useful decision is the boundary. Your city's official limits may include industrial estates, motorway interchanges and private roads that are miserable or impossible to walk. Decide up front what counts.
- A neighbourhood. The best first project. A few weekends, a clear finish.
- A district or ward. A season of evening walks.
- The whole city. A multi-year project. Worth doing, but set smaller milestones inside it.
Write your rules down too. Do private roads count? Footpaths that are not streets? Both sides of a dual carriageway? There is no right answer, only a consistent one.
Step two: track what you have covered
Memory fails after the first few dozen streets. You need a record that shows covered ground at a glance and makes the gaps obvious. A cumulative map is ideal for this: instead of a list of separate walks, it keeps one map where everything you have walked is marked and everything else is not.
FOG does this with fog. The whole world starts hidden, and every street you walk is cleared and stays clear. Gaps are dark, so the next walk plans itself: go where the fog is. Because it records with the app closed and the screen off, the walk to the shop counts too, and you never lose a street because you forgot to press start.
If you have walked a lot already, you do not have to begin from zero. FOG can import Google Timeline exports and GPX files, so streets from previous years appear on the map straight away. See how on the Google Timeline import page.
Step three: plan routes, not walks
Once the easy routes are done, coverage slows sharply. The streets that are left are short spurs, cul-de-sacs and loops that do not lead anywhere. Plan walks that sweep a block of them at once, and accept some doubling back. Walking every dead end means walking it twice.
Work in a pattern: one grid square at a time, or one side of a main road. Finishing an area completely is more satisfying than scattering lines across the whole map, and it is much easier to see what is left.
Step four: keep going
The middle of the project is where people stop. A few things help:
- Watch a number move. FOG shows the area you have unfogged and, on the share card, the share of the city you have lit.
- Mark milestones: the first neighbourhood finished, the first 10 per cent, every street around your home.
- Mix in somewhere new. A weekend in another town clears a whole new patch and keeps it fresh.
- Count every walk. Errands are progress if your tracker records them.
And be honest about what you can walk. Motorways, private estates and unsafe areas are fine to leave dark.
About FOG
FOG is a fog of war walking map. No account, no sign-up, no cloud: the map is stored only on your phone, and you can export a GPX backup at any time. Exploring is free; one purchase of FOG Unlimited adds the higher ranks, every character path and history import, with no subscription. It is a phone app, on iOS and Android.
For ideas by city, see the city guides.
Questions people actually ask
How long does it take to walk every street in a city?
It depends entirely on the city. A small town can take a few months of regular walking; a large city usually takes years. Many people pick a neighbourhood first.
What is the best app to track streets you have walked?
Look for one that keeps a single cumulative map rather than separate workouts, records in the background, and shows gaps clearly. FOG uses fog: everywhere you have not walked stays dark.
Do I have to start from zero?
Not with FOG Unlimited. It imports Google Timeline exports and GPX files, so streets you walked in earlier years appear on the map.
Does running count?
Yes. FOG clears fog for walking, running and riding.
Start with a dark map.
FOG is free to explore. No account, no subscription, and your map never leaves your phone.
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