Walking is the UK’s biggest, most equitable, most scalable outdoor activity. Reconomics 3.0 shows that walking leads participation across outdoor sport and recreation, dominates how people use green and natural spaces, and underpins major health, wellbeing, and local economic benefits.
Outdoor recreation often gets treated like dessert. Lovely if you have time, optional if you don’t.
Reconomics 3.0 flips that story. Launched in Parliament in January 2026, it pulls together the latest evidence on the economic, health and social value of outdoor recreation, building on the earlier Reconomics (2014) and Reconomics Plus (2017), and responding to the real world shifts of the last eight years, from surging demand for outdoor space to rising costs and climate pressures.
The headline figures are hard to ignore. Reconomics 3.0 reports that 34 million people use outdoor recreation as part of their blend of activities, including 1.9 million children, and that participation is increasingly diverse, with an average 22% growth across ethnic minority groups compared with ten years ago. It also estimates 1 million jobs generated by outdoor recreation, £22 billion of value to the UK economy, and £46.8 billion of social value, alongside over £5 billion in savings to the NHS.
That’s not a hobby sector. That’s national infrastructure.
And in London, the most important “piece” of that infrastructure is also the simplest: walking.
Walking is how London meets nature
If we want a National Park City that people actually feel, not just agree with, we have to pay attention to the behaviour that already connects the most people to the outdoors.
Reconomics 3.0 draws on Natural England’s People and Nature Survey and lands on a quietly massive finding:
When people visit green and natural spaces, the main thing they do is walk. Walking (including dog walking) is reported by 70% of visitors.
Read that again, slowly.
Nature connection at scale is not primarily delivered through specialist activities or perfect weekend plans. It’s delivered through everyday walking, along park paths, canal towpaths, street tree lines, cemeteries, commons, and the in-between green that hides in plain sight.
The outdoors is already part of life, but it needs protecting and sharing more fairly
Reconomics reports an estimated 4.12 billion visits by English adults to the outdoors between April 2023 and March 2024. It also finds that 67% of adults visited a green and natural space at least once in the last 14 days.
People are going outside. The appetite is there.
And the reasons people give for visiting green and natural spaces are exactly the kind of human needs that cities intensify:
- fresh air
- physical health and exercise
- mental health and wellbeing
- connecting to nature and watching wildlife
If you’ve ever felt your shoulders drop as soon as you reach water, or noticed how a five minute detour under trees can soften a whole day, you’ve already met the logic.
Walking is the bridge between “nature is good for us” and “nature is part of my week”.
London’s nature is more local than we think
One of the most helpful shifts in thinking is this: nature connection doesn’t require a train journey.
Reconomics highlights that the most visited spaces include urban green spaces like parks and playgrounds, and that rivers, lakes or canals are also widely visited.
That matters in a city like London where nature is often encountered as a sequence, not a single destination:
street trees, a churchyard, a pocket park, a railway cutting, a canal, a community garden, then home again.
Walking is what stitches those pieces into a living map you can feel.
Walking is not occasional, it’s continuous
Reconomics uses the National Travel Survey to show how deeply walking is embedded in everyday life.
In England in 2023 there were 18.76 billion walking stages, including 3.32 billion leisure walking stages, plus 4.98 billion for other leisure reasons (including casual walks, excluding shopping). On average, each person took 325 walking stages a year.
And leisure walking isn’t rare. Reconomics reports:
- 65.9% of adults walk for leisure at least monthly
- 54.8% weekly
- 19.4% at least five times per week
This is why walking is such a powerful lever for a National Park City.
If we make walking feel easier, safer, more welcoming, more nature-rich, the benefits can reach millions, because the behaviour is already there. We’re not inventing a new habit, we’re upgrading an existing one.
Walking is a wellbeing practice you can actually repeat
Reconomics reports extremely high public agreement that time outdoors supports both physical and mental health.
That aligns with what many of us feel instinctively: the outdoors helps, and walking is the simplest way to access it.
But the key word is repeat. Nature connection isn’t only a once a month treat. It’s a relationship. Walking builds that relationship because it is:
- low barrier, no kit, no booking, no expertise required
- adaptable, gentle pace, step free routes, short loops, long rambles
- social by default, side by side conversation is easier than face to face
- sensory, you notice seasons, birdsong, buds, fungi, water movement
- local, the kind of connection that builds belonging, not just memories
For London National Park City, this is the sweet spot: walking as both wellbeing and citizenship, a way of caring for the places that care for us.
A few ways to turn a walk into nature connection
If you want your next walk to feel less like “exercise” and more like “meeting the living city”, here are three small practices.
1) Notice five living things
Not rare things, real things. Moss on brick, a robin’s tick-tick call, seed heads, winter buds, a fox track, lichen on a railing. The act of noticing changes the walk. Your attention becomes a torch, and nature starts stepping into the beam.
2) Follow the blue thread
Reconomics highlights the popularity of rivers, lakes and canals as places people visit.
In London, blue space is a brilliant nature amplifier. Even short stretches can bring moorhens, wagtails, dragonflies, and a different pace of breathing.
3) Take one slow minute
Stop for sixty seconds. No phone. No photo. Just listen. In London, nature is often a layer under the city soundtrack. Once you pause, you can hear it, and once you can hear it, you start seeking it.
What this means for London National Park City, and for the London Walking Festival
Reconomics 3.0 makes the national case that outdoor recreation is a serious asset for health, communities, and the economy.
But for London, the most important takeaway is simpler:
Walking is the main way people access nature.
So, if we want more Londoners to feel the benefits of a National Park City, we should make it easier to walk into nature, and to keep doing it.
That’s why the London Walking Festival matters. Not as a nice programme of dates in a calendar, but as a citywide invitation that can:
- help people start walking for nature connection, especially those facing barriers
- build confidence through friendly group walks and clear, accessible routes
- bring attention to local green and blue spaces in every borough
- create repeatable rituals, weekly walks, monthly routes, seasonal programmes
- turn “I should get out more” into “this is just what we do here”
London doesn’t need more perfection. It needs more permission.
So consider this your invitation: take a walk this week, and let it be a nature walk, even if it’s only twenty minutes. London is full of life. Walking is how we meet it.
