[suneilp]

It might be cultural, but things like these start out from basic needs and just become absorbed into cultural standards. As is demonstrated by the fact that the introduction of better shoes led towards the change of heel-first walking due to laziness.

[jacobolus]

Rigid shoes are not strictly “better”. Arguably they are in many ways worse, stunting development of small stabilizer muscles throughout the foot and lower leg (through disuse), reducing flexibility and dexterity, encouraging poor posture, and leading to various kinds of injuries especially among runners (heel-striking when running puts a lot of repetitive shock on all of the hard tissues from the heel up through the hip, even when wearing very padded shoes). Shoes with even slightly raised heels in particular lead to reduced ankle flexibility, which impairs squatting and jumping (this is compounded by a lifetime of sitting on European-style chairs for hours every day). They also tend to not be very foot-shaped, causing blisters and cramping people’s toes inward: adults in rigid-shoe-wearing places end up with really weird shaped feet, bunions, etc., sometimes requiring surgery to fix. I suspect that many mobility problems among the elderly are caused or exacerbated by a lifetime of wearing rigid shoes. Maybe less importantly, they lead to much louder footfalls.

Their main advantages are (a) they are more waterproof, (b) they are more durable (especially on hard rough surfaces canvas or thin leather shoes wear out quite quickly), (c) they offer some protection against sharp objects that you otherwise have to pay more attention not to step on.

[specialist]

TL;DR: Wearing flat shoes fixed my feet.

My orthopedic doctor had me switch from arches and heels (typical running and dress shoes) to flat souls and minimal pressure on the back of my heel (flip flops, Keen sandals, those thin shoes from New Balance). It both helped clear my plantar fasciitis and my flat feet got some arches.