I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you hadn’t read the whole article.But I’m not sure why you seem to place so much importance on what I can only describe as “purposeless walks” - I mean I’m not sure (and correct me if I’m wrong) , but I get the feeling you’re not counting walks to window shop or to get to another destination, or walking on a trail through a park or along a beach or walking from church to Grandma’s for dinner Or for exercise or to the baseball field or the picnic area, or to meet other people at a pre-planned spot for some activity. Just walking to see who you happen to run into and can socialize with.
I’m not sure that there ever was that much of that sort of walking anywhere in the US but I’m also not sure exactly how anyone could tell why the masses anywhere were walking- strolling to be with other people and getting exercise as a side benefit doesn’t look any different from doing so to get exercise with socializing as a side benefit. I mean, if you had come down my street in NYC on a summer day in the sixties , you would have seen the neighbors on the front steps socializing after dinner. They weren’t actually out there to socialize - no one had AC and it was a little cooler outside, but as long as you’re out there anyway, why not be sociable? But you certainly couldn’t tell that from looking.
I did the neighborhood walk with my grandfather, back in the 1960s, and later with my parents. Also with my girls, when they were young. Always the same neighborhood, too. Now if my girls ever get around to giving me grandkids, I’ll walk with them around our neighborhood too.
NYC was mentioned. Boston and Cambridge MA. Also Hoboken, NJ and Jersey City, NJ you can often find people walking along the various parks, downtown areas and waterfronts.
More likely the suburban subdivision and urban sprawl killed the sunday stroll. Modern American towns and cities are often designed on 1 mile square “superblocks” that follow the Public Land Survey System. That is to say, people live in a one square mile maze of single family homes designed for driving, not walking. Even if you decide to take a stroll, the only place to stroll to is the strip malls and big box stores that sit on 6 lane high speed arterial roads surrounding the subdivision.
I know, and though I’m not a speaker of German, I enjoy this about the language. Once, at dinner with some people, I was describing something that happened in the house next door to the house next door to mine. I mused aloud,* “I’ll bet in German you could say that with one word,”* whereupon one of the college kids at the table piped up with, “Der nexternexterhausen.”
The Ustinov bio sounds interesting. I always loved him.
I don’t know either. I guess that will remain a mystery to both of us.
I propose: “Das Übernächsternachbarshaus” :D.
Hey! Let’s set that to music! 
Tons of parks in Portland and they get heavy use, though I couldn’t speak to nighttime activities. There is a free concerts-in-the-parks series over a number of Sundays during the summer, which are very popular and are held in the evenings. People bring food and drink and dance to the music.
Not quite sure where you draw a distinction between
- the Latin/Mediterranean tradition of paseo/passegiata (where warm evenings encourage people out on to the streets, squares and promenades, which could be a major opportunity in traditional/conservative small communities for the young people to eye each other up)
- enjoying urban parks and gardens in the same sort of way, and particularly taking young children to the playground to work off some energy
- the (perhaps more Northern/Protestant) custom of walking because it’s good for you, physically, mentally and socially (which may also involve getting people out into a rather wilder sort of nature than your average urban public garden and park).
Certainly the latter two options are very much alive and well in the UK. London has, for all sorts of historical reasons, massive quantities of open space, some of it in the manicured parks you see in the tourist brochures, some of it in more lightly-managed woodland and heathland - and much the same applies in pretty well any other urban centres.
Yeah, does have a kind of beat to it, Das-Über-nächster-Nachbars-Haus!
I’m thinking of one primarily (as it were) and to a certain extent, three. Not two. Thank you for sorting them out like that.
We need an accordion and a tuba. And some beer.
Just found this. Turns out that in Italy, there is a word for this: passeggiata
There sure is such a word:
Bolding mine.