Every The Every Single Street challenge: how to walk every street in your city
The Every Single Street challenge means walking or running every street of a city at least once. You pick a city, track each outing, and keep going until every street on the map is done. It takes most people years, not weeks, which is part of the appeal: you get to know your own city block by block, at your own pace.
Where the idea comes from
The challenge became widely known through the American ultrarunner Rickey Gates, who ran every street of San Francisco in 2018 and called the project Every Single Street. Since then, runners and walkers all over the world have taken it to their own cities, usually more slowly: an hour here, a Sunday afternoon there.
What makes it stick is that there is always a next street. Most of us walk the same few routes for years. Aiming for every street sends you down the side street you never turned into, across the bridge you only knew from the other bank, into the quarter you only ever drove through.
How big is your city?
The honest answer is: bigger than you think. A city’s streets add up to hundreds or thousands of kilometres:
| City | Streets | Street length | At 5 km/h |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zürich | 2,139 | 792 km | ≈ 160 hours |
| Paris | 5,579 | 1,779 km | ≈ 360 hours |
| London | 17,561 | 4,354 km | ≈ 870 hours |
| Berlin | 12,149 | 6,005 km | ≈ 1,200 hours |
| New York City | 12,626 | 9,993 km | ≈ 2,000 hours |
Numbers from the city pages, counted from OpenStreetMap. That’s why most people choose a smaller goal first: their own neighbourhood, one district, or everything inside a ring road.
How to plan it
- Start at your door. Your own neighbourhood is the easiest to finish, and finishing something early keeps you going.
- Go district by district. A district is a goal you can see the end of. In Every Street each one earns a tier as you go: Discovered, Bronze (25 %), Silver (50 %), Gold (75 %) and Conquered (90 %).
- Walk loops, not lines. Pick a block of streets you haven’t walked and plan a loop through them; dead ends are easier to collect on the way back.
- Count what you already did. Walks you’ve recorded before count too: import them from Apple Health, Health Connect, Strava, Google Timeline or GPX files.
- Use short walks. Twenty minutes at lunch covers a surprising number of short streets.
How to track it
You need two things: a record of where you walked, and a map of every street to compare it with. Doing that by hand with a paper map works for a neighbourhood, not for a city.
Every Street does the comparison on your phone. It records your walks (or starts by itself with Auto walk), matches them to the city’s streets, and a street lights up once you’ve walked 90 % of it. Your progress adds up per street, per district and for the whole city, and your GPS track never leaves your phone (why that matters).
Other tools take a different approach, for example by working on activities you upload to Strava: see how the apps compare.
Keep it fun
- Collect your city’s own achievements: every city in Every Street has badges only it has, such as Berlin’s Wall Trail or the Seine bridges in Paris.
- Walk with friends: start a crew and compare how many blocks you’ve walked, if you like (only totals are shared).
- Look back: the heatmap shows where you walk most, and where you’ve never been.
Questions
What is the Every Single Street challenge?
It’s the goal of walking or running every street of a city at least once. The idea became widely known through the ultrarunner Rickey Gates, who ran every street of San Francisco in 2018. Today many people do it on foot in their own city, over months or years.
How long does it take to walk every street of a city?
Divide the city’s street length by your walking speed. Zürich has about 792 km of streets, roughly 160 hours at 5 km/h. Berlin has about 6,005 km, roughly 1,200 hours. At an hour a day, that’s a few months for a small city and several years for a big one.
Do I have to walk every street end to end in one go?
No. Every walk adds to the streets you’ve already covered. In Every Street a street counts once you’ve walked 90 % of its length, across as many walks as you like.
Which app tracks the streets I’ve walked?
Every Street does it on your phone: it matches your walks to your city’s streets, lights up each street you’ve walked and shows your progress per district. Other tools, such as CityStrides, work with activities you sync from Strava or Garmin.
Walk your city with Every Street
Free for iPhone and Android, coming soon to the App Store and Google Play. Your GPS track never leaves your phone.
- Coming soonApp Store
- Coming soonGoogle Play