During the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, a friend told me about a new 17-mile trail in San Francisco that ran from the piers at Candlestick Point to the cliffs of Land’s End—burrowing through lesser known city parks and forgotten wild spaces like canyons and wetlands. As soon as it became safe to travel again, I caught a plane to SFO and spent two days hiking the Crosstown Trail. It was an instant love affair: a realization that you can embark on an incredible hike in a major city. With trailside breaks for art, music, or burritos on the way!
As I boarded my flight back home, I realized that my hometown of Boston could host a park-to-park trail like this.
When you hear “trail building,” you probably think of the long, expensive process of breaking ground and building paths for walkers and cyclists. But in fact, it’s possible to create an urban trail without picking up a shovel. The new and evolving art of Instant Urban Trail planning—modeled by the Crosstown Trail—involves finding the hidden connections between walkable city environments, and clicking them together into a route that people can walk or bike with maps and direction. It’s an act of curation and after my Crosstown ramble, I got to work scouting and mapping a new Boston trail.
In June of 2022, I launched an early version of the Walking City Trail—a 27-mile hiking route through several of Boston’s most immersive parks, forests, and gardens, running through 17 neighborhoods and accessible by public transportation. Through a series of guided hikes along the trail, organized with the support of Boston City Councilor Kendra Lara and activists from Mothers Out Front, a “WCT” community began to form. Ideas were exchanged: ideas for how the trail could be improved and include even more overlooked Boston green spaces. That winter, a small group of us implemented these changes, updating all of the maps and directions on the trail website, cementing the Walking City Trail in its current 27 mile form. Since then, hundreds of Boston residents and visitors have hiked along the Walking City Trail (and thanks to our homemade trail signs, we now have the QR code scans to prove it.)
Instant Urban Trail planning is a low-cost, scalable tool that can be picked up and used to great effect in any city or town that offers walkable environments. Whether it features a procession of leafy parks or a collection of historic neighorhoods, an instant urban trail can activate underused spaces, bring economic activity to neighborhoods in any corner of a city, and inspire cross-pollination between communities. That’s what we’ve experienced in Boston, and as we continue to build the Walking City Trail coalition, we’re also imagining where our next trail could go….
Amid surging demand for access to the outdoors, cities and towns are now emerging as destinations that can compete with the classic backcountry venues. (In fact, Outside magazine recently spotlit Boston as one of its top hiking destinations!) If you’re interested in building new trails where you live and you’re looking for some support, I would love to help. As a trail creator and a journalist covering outdoor recreation and city life, I can offer years of experiential guidance on how to design, launch, and activate an instant urban trail. If you would like to work together, please get in touch!