Have you ever entertained an idea of walking all the streets of your hometown? Sounds a bit crazy, yeah? But there are actually people who do just that - walk all the streets of their hometown. Hometown because it is of interest, and it takes a lot of time so you’d better live there too!

Here is an article about a man, Matt Green, who walked all the streets of his hometown, New York City. Covering all five boroughs of Manhattan, The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. You can follow his walking journey around New York City on his blog and find out more about the documentary made about it by his friend and filmmaker Jeremy Workman who followed Green around for three and a half years, capturing everything he saw and did on these neighborhood explorations. The documentary is called The World Before Your Feet.

My hometown is Helsinki, and having embarked on this journey, I found out that there have been others before me. And why not?! Others who each in their own unique way made it their task to walk along all of the streets of Helsinki that number close to 4000 and stretch some 800 kilometers (ca 500 miles).

So what you do is you make a list of all the streets. In alphabetical order, and/or arranged in areas and suburbs. And then you - start walking!

Of course you might want to do it by bike, but it’s just not the same. Even if some of the streets might be miles long, you are required to walk them in order to claim them! Or as Matt Green above says: “It’s more of a human way of traveling. You’re fully in the place as you’re moving through it.”

Google Maps (or any other good map program) is a great aid in this journey as you get to see your surroundings in a glance, and then plan and execute your walking in great detail. You become your own pedestrian tale as you claim each street to your personal journey through your city, and you get to experience that city in ways that you couldn’t by just driving your car or riding your bike. But you do need a way to list where you’ve been, whether it be Google Docs or a plain notebook and a pen. You might also want to time your walks or measure the streets in some other way. Some kind of app is good to have, Runkeeper or the like, to see your progress and set monthly goals or whatever. For it does take a long time to walk the streets of a city. You need to find your own ways to keep up your motivation. Sometimes it is a good idea to take a break, and at other times you might want to claim - or “devour” - a great number of streets. Easier done of course if at least some of those streets are short. Then again, you might do only one single street a day if it is several miles long!

There are a lot of things to think about, walking the city streets with this purpose in mind. Where to head for, and how. What’s the weather like, which bus routes take you to a good stop. How to avoid unnecessary u-turns, how to walk in the most economical and timesaving manner. What shoes to wear, and where to have the reflective lights or bands in the winter. How much water to bring with you in the summer. How best to get home from wherever you end up. How attentive you need to be with your surroundings, and how not to just walk but also enjoy what you see - for you do get to see a lot! And also, whether to document your walking in photographs. It may take time to take a good picture, and it might break your pace - so you need to decide whether to do that.

But we all find our own ways to manage all that. And at the end of the day we may feel pretty good thinking about the experiences we had. Like walking a long, steep neighborhood uphill laid with ice underneath the snow, and by sheer willpower and a pair of wonderful icebugs you finally get to the top of the hill to claim that street. And a rabbit is watching you for a second, Christmas lights blinking around the houses, and snow pouring down from the sky. Those moments may seem magical, and give an extra boost to continue the walk. Claim one more street till it’s time to go home.