Tag Archives: walkable places

Walk this way- the benefits of walking for people and cities

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“In a quality city, a person should be able to live their entire life without a car, and not feel deprived” – Paul Bedford, City of Toronto Planning Director (2014)

Improvements to the design and layouts of streets and cities can have a significant impact on encouraging more of us to walk. However, many people living in cities face a significant number of barriers to being physically active where they live, particularly in relation to walking. Pathways and public spaces such as parks and throughways are often unappealing, unsafe, congested, traffic filled, noisy or for some completely inaccessible, which leads to a reliance on vehicular travel and a reluctance to be physically active within the city environment.

Walkable environments consider not only the physical design of routes, but also features and facilities that are inclusive of the widest possible range of needs; for example, places for people to rest along their journeys (including well designed seats and benches), accessible toilet facilities, signage and street design that is sensitive to a range of needs and that can help with orientation and wayfinding. However, the benefits are clear across the board when it comes to trying to make our cities more walkable (and as a result healthier). This blog post outlines a few of these potential benefits, and considers how planners can get involved in realising some of them through effective planning and design in their own cities.

Social benefits
Safe, walkable, environments can provide opportunities for people of all ages and abilities to stay socially connected and engaged. This can be particularly helpful in communities with a lot of children, older people or vulnerable adults. Having areas that are known to be safe can help to encourage people to leave their homes, reducing the impact of loneliness and social isolation, and improving their sense and feeling of community in their local area, which in turn can help with health and wellbeing and community cohesion.

Health benefits
Walking is good for us! In August this year a survey by Public Health England revealed that four in 10 middle-aged adults fail to manage even one brisk 10-minute walk a month. This despite research showing that walking each day can rapidly reduce risk of health conditions such as stroke and heart attack. Promoting active lifestyles through encouraging walking has also been shown to help tackle the growing issue of obesity, particularly among younger people. Walking can also be good for mental health, particularly when it is done as a group. Increasingly, walking interventions are being prescribed as part of social prescription initiatives to help people regain health, fitness and confidence. But in order for these to be effective, spaces and suitable environments for walking need to be made available.

Environmental benefits
For many cities, London, Manchester and Glasgow included, congestion and air pollution are major issues. Creating walkable cities, and encouraging walking, cycling and other more environmentally friendly modes of transport can have a significant impact on the levels of pollution within an area. Reducing vehicle use can also have an impact on noise, water, thermal and light pollution in our cities too. Some attempts are being made to reduce the level of pollution in our cities – vehicles in central London have been subject to a congestion charge for a number of years. However, recent developments and attempts to reduce the high levels of air pollution in the city have led to the introduction of the “T-Charge”. It has been suggested that the money raised from this charge could be used to fund green transport initiatives, and this includes improving cycle and walkways and making streets more easy to navigate on foot.

Economic benefits
Walkable spaces can act as a catalyst for local economic vitality, regeneration and tourism. Research has shown that improving public spaces, and creating an environment which encourages more people to walk safely, (and free from the noise, smell and feelings of claustrophobia that can come with high levels of car traffic) has a significant and positive impact on businesses, resulting in people spending more time, but also more money in shops and town centres.

Creating walkable cities: what can be done to help
Planners and city officials are increasingly aware of the need to promote more open, safe and accessible public spaces in new development areas. However, some cities have already implemented practices that could be taken forward in the future. Organisations like Living Streets have produced road maps and blueprints of how cities can use planning to improve public spaces, make them walker friendly and reduce reliance on vehicles. Consultancies like Arup have also produced research on the benefits of creating “walkable cities” and in 2014 RTPI launched their own report on the benefits of planning for “healthier cities” (which includes provision for making cities more walkable). In 2017 the World Health Organisation (WHO) published a briefing on transforming public spaces to promote physical activity in cities. There are a number of ways in which planners and city planning teams can have a positive impact on promoting change to encourage more walking in our cities including:

  • Create walkable neighbourhoods – In Melbourne a “local connectivity plan” was introduced in 2014. The plan was used to build a network of neighbourhoods which had social, leisure and retail facilities within a 20 minute walk of people’s homes.
  • Prioritise walking, and “walkable spaces” in development and regeneration plans – The mayor of London appointed a walking and cycling commissioner in 2017, whose role is to make walking and cycling easier and safer across the capital. The mayor’s new ‘healthy streets’ approach is a commitment to a system of healthy streets and strategies that will help Londoners use cars less and walk, cycle and use public transport more.
  • Make walking safe – Designing walkways and footpaths that incorporate wide, well lit pathways, well signposted and nicely designed and maintained routes has been shown to be one of the main factors in encouraging people to walk more within their local area.
  • Make walking easy (and fun) – Go Jauntly is a new walking app that uses photographs rather than maps to guide users on routes around woods and byways. Walkers can add their own routes, and it is hoped that it the app will “increase the social appeal of people walking together” coming up with new routes within their own neighbourhoods, or areas they like to walk in.

If you found this article interesting, you might also like to read our previous blogs:

It’s a kind of magic: how green infrastructure is changing landscapes and lives

Hidden in plain sight – the value of green spaces

Follow us on Twitter to see what developments in public and social policy are interesting our research team.

Hitting the ground walking: how planners can create more walkable cities, one step at a time

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In recent times, walking has been enlisted as one of the key weapons in the war on inactivity. Planners and policymakers have taken note of evidence highlighting the benefits of walking for health and wellbeing. Meanwhile, local and national governments have taken up the challenge of embedding walking into policy, strategy and guidance. There are now national walking strategies for England, Wales and Scotland, and from Belfast to Bristol local councils have published their own plans to get more people walking.

Travel trends and their costs

During the twentieth century, there was a shift from work involving physical labour to jobs of a more sedentary nature. In addition, the growth of suburbs and rising car ownership has contributed to a decline in people travelling on foot. At the same time, the attractions of television and home computers mean fewer people are spending their leisure time playing sports or taking part in outdoor activities.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has put the consequences of these trends into stark perspective:

“Sedentary lifestyles increase all causes of mortality, double the risk of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and obesity, and increase the risks of colon cancer, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, lipid disorders, depression and anxiety.”

  • Worldwide, around two million deaths a year are attributed to physical inactivity.
  • In the UK, physical activity contributes to one in six deaths, and costs £7.4 billion a year to business and wider society. It is the fourth largest cause of disease and disability in the UK.
  • In Scotland, inactivity contributes to over 2,500 deaths each year, costing the NHS £94.1m annually.

The benefits of walking

Efforts encouraging people to become more active have had mixed results, and there is now a recognition that turning the tide of physical activity may take decades to achieve. But there’s also a growing understanding that physical activity that can be built in to everyday life can be as effective as supervised exercise programmes. And, as we reported last week, the health benefits of walking can be demonstrated in unexpected ways, such as the emergence of the Pokémon Go game as an incentive to exercise.

A recent report from the Arup design and engineering firm highlights that walking is good for cities as well as for people. It details more than 50 ways in which the world can benefit from walkable cities, including:

  • Social benefits – health and wellbeing, safety, placemaking, social cohesion and equality.
  • Economic benefits – city attractiveness, urban regeneration, cost savings.
  • Environmental benefits – addressing air and noise pollution, improving liveability and transport efficiency.
  • Political benefits – leadership, urban governance, sustainable development and planning opportunities.

Making walkable places

Another key theme of the Arup report was the importance of planning for pedestrians:

“If we want cities to be more walkable, the way we design cities has to change. Walkable places are more compact, dense with mixed uses. Streets have to be well connected with more shade from sun and rain, green spaces, trees and public spaces. And, we must pay more attention to the quality of public spaces, not just providing quantity of walkable space.” Joanna Rowelle, Director at Arup

The report lists 40 actions that city leaders can consider to inform walking policy, strategy and design. Among the ideas:

  • Temporarily removing cars from a city can transform roads into public spaces, raise awareness around car dependency, reduce air pollution, and reveal the potential opportunities created by having more – and safer – spaces for people.
  • Financial incentives and disincentives, including subsidies and taxes like congestion charges, can be used to encourage behaviour change.
  • Use of shared spaces to create a pedestrian-oriented environment where people are aware of fellow road users.
  • Unused infrastructure – such as New York City’s High Line – offers major opportunities for facilitating safe and attractive pedestrian routes and activity spaces.
  • Urban regeneration creates the opportunity to redevelop small pieces of land into pocket parks or public spaces with a green character.
  • Rivers and waterways can be transformed from barriers into walking and cycling routes by creating green and accommodating waterfronts.

Best foot forward?

Many of the suggestions in the Arup report are not hard to implement, and needn’t be costly. But even when schemes have been enacted, they may face opposition.

Each weekend, for the past seven years, a busy thoroughfare in Bucharest has been cleared to create Via Sport – a safe space for leisure and sport. This summer, the city’s new mayor claimed Via Sport has been causing traffic problems. The scheme has now been closed for the foreseeable future.

Old instincts die hard. Those rethinking patterns and processes of urban design to stimulate walking (and cycling) will face a few bumps in the road. But the potential rewards will be great. As David Sim of Gehl Architects observes:

“The key strategy is about getting people to actually spend time out on the street. They become a part of the space, familiar with their neighbours, and are in tune with city life.”

Our previous blog posts on urban planning for pedestrians and cyclists include: