Explore the CITY’s edge
Short walks, medium walks, and full-day perimeter segments — with our groups or on your own!
Connect & Gather
Events, exhibitions, forums, story-sharing, and celebrations — you don’t have to walk to be part of it.
Collaborate
Schools, organizations, journalists, cultural partners & civic leaders — let’s explore what’s possible together.
Walk Around Philadelphia is 100 miles of adventure around the city’s edge — and an organization devoted to bringing neighbors together to make that experience inclusive and accessible to all.
Why the edge?
Walking the perimeter invites us to see Philadelphia from its margins rather than its center — noticing waterways, industry, neighborhoods, ecosystems, and the boundaries that shape everyday life. There’s something powerful about circumnavigating a place — tracing the whole outline, step by step — that deepens our relationship to it and to one another.
Over time, Walk Around Philadelphia is growing into a kind of regional pilgrimage — a shared cultural practice with the potential to connect people across the city and beyond.
A practice of care
Walk Around Philadelphia isn’t a guided tour or a fixed route — it’s a shared wayfinding practice grounded in curiosity, presence, mutual care, safety and respect for all.
-> Guidelines & Safety
Stories from the edge
Want to see & hear what it looks like to walk all the way around Philly’s furthest margins? Check out some of our stories… or send us yours!
-> Stories from the walk
Be part of the journey
Walk Around Philadelphia is growing into a long-term civic practice — connecting people across the region through shared exploration of the city’s edges.
-> History & Roadmap
Growing a shared practice — together
Over the past decade, Walk Around Philadelphia has grown from a small artist-led experiment into a citywide cultural practice — with thousands of participants, expanding partnerships, and a long-term vision for a future where:
- every young person has the opportunity to walk the city’s edge as part of experiential learning programs or as a graduation ritual
- arriving college/grad students and other new residents use the Walk to connect to place and community
- long-term residents use the walk to rediscover and find new wonder in the place they’ve always called home
- citizens returning from incarceration have the opportunity to use the walk as a transition ritual while earning stipends to support their reentry and walking alongside social service providers & prospective employers
- people of all backgrounds can participate through stipend support, and accessibility initiatives
- the Walk becomes a regional pilgrimage tradition that reconnects us to one another and to the land & water that hold the city
Building this vision takes time, care, and community support.
If the Walk resonates with you, we invite you to help sustain and expand this work.
-> Collaborate
Ready to walk with us?
Join a walk.
Set out on your own.
Or simply come say hello.