If someone would ask people living in cities what’s the number one thing they would improve in their city, many would definitely desire quicker moving around and less congestions. In order to achieve that, they would envisage wider roads, more lanes, continuous green lights, cars flowing without hindrance and also ample and inexpensive (maybe even free) parking. What if I say, though, that in order to improve the quality of life in cities we need the exact opposite: narrower roads, less lanes, less (and more expensive) parking places, traffic lights favoring pedestrians and cyclists? Today more and more city asks the million dollar question: do we want to create ideal conditions for cars, or for people?

What is the problem?

Driving around in a nice car is undoubtedly convenient - that is, if one doesn’t have to spend hours in traffic jams. Fortunately for drivers, our urban developers and traffic engineers have done anything possible (and more) to create the best possible conditions for car drivers in our cities. Cars, however - be they moving or immobile - keep demanding more and more space in our cities, and you can only meet this demand if you take even more space away from people - from pavements, public spaces, parks. Pedestrians (and cyclists) are only supporting actors (at best) in city roads, where the cars are the stars. Recently, however, an increasing number of cities have recognized that car-oriented urban development is a dead-end street, contributing to numerous urban (and also global) problems. Just to name a few:

1. Negative environmental impact:
   Cities are responsible for 70 % of global CO2 emissions, and a significant part of this is caused by non-other than our beloved cars.
    
2. Scarcity of available urban spaces:
   An average car spends only less than 10 % of its lifetime moving around and spends the rest staying in one place. Just think about it: something that is supposed to be mobile by definition is actually immobile most of the time. Would you invest in a hotel where the average occupancy rate is 10 % or less? In addition, cars need lots of space even when they stand still - space otherwise available for people.
    
3. Health problems:
   Our sedentary lifestyle is the No. 1 reason behind numerous health issues. We sit at our workplace, sit at home, and sit even when we are moving around - cars slowly but surely have taken over the role of the most basic human movement - walking - in our cities. And we haven’t even mentioned the health issues resulting from air pollutions caused by cars.
    
4. Economic problems: cars cost more and more for our cities and the increasing costs are only partly covered by the car-owners (although they probably feel they actually pay too much for the privilege of having a car). Costs of negative environmental and health impacts are not included in either the price of petrol, or the price of the car. The development and maintenance costs of our city road networks are also increasing - and car-owners don’t pay for this fully, either. Besides, creating and maintaining quality parking places is also extremely expensive, even if one doesn’t factor in the value of the land that could have been used for other purposes - and we (car owners) don’t pay for the full costs.

Walkable city: where the goal is to move PEOPLE and not CARS efficiently around

Recognizing this problem cities around the world look for solutions enabling efficient and sustainable urban mobility. Though the specific solutions differ depending on the character, size, development level and also geographic position of the given urban area, they actually rely on a small number of common principles:

1. They build on a new paradigm stating that the prime function urban mobility is to move PEOPLE and not CARS as efficiently as possible.
2. They strive to ensure the mobility of people in urban environment by using an efficient mix of various transport modes.
3. They aim to drastically reduce individual car transport even on short to medium term.
4. In every solution, the essential ingredient of urban mobility is walking, which is the most basic form of urban mobility since cities exist.

Basically all known solutions consider walking - pedestrian traffic - the basic form of urban mobility, and the pedestrians - when needed - can be “accelerated” by other forms of transport - like cycling or public transport and sometimes even car transport (preferably relying on the more efficient use of cars based on sharing).

Improving and promoting walkability, providing optimal conditions for pedestrians increasingly gets in the forefront of urban mobility development initiatives. More and more cities launch complex programs aimed directly at developing walkability and also consider walkability criteria in any development project implemented. What’s more, in the United States there is an indicator - walk score - that is widely accepted and used to measure and quantify the level of walkability in any given urban neighborhood.

Quality conditions for walkability are also becoming real competitive edge in cities: when choosing the city to live, the young, highly educated, talented crowd - the so-called creative class - increasingly considers how walkable is the city or neighborhood in question, how easily and quickly can be reached the various services, shops, workplaces, gyms, cultural facilities or restaurants and pubs.

Consequently, the cities that do not focus on improving walkability - and, more generally speaking, sustainable urban mobility TODAY, not only take future risks that currently seem very remote, but actually will face drastically diminishing competitiveness in the very near future.

What makes a city walkable?

In order to significantly increase the number of people choosing to walk in cities, numerous conditions need to be in place - chief among them the criteria presented in the figure below:

1. Walking needs to be useful - which means that the majority of functions and services used by city dwellers have to be easily and quickly reached on foot - in most cases people walk with a specific goal.
    
2. Walking needs to be safe, too: nobody wants to walk in neighborhoods where there is a high risk of crime - mugging or other acts of violence - or of traffic accidents. That requires - among others - efficient crime prevention, architectural solutions designed to reduce the risk of crimes, good public lighting, high level of traffic safety, as well as strong and supportive small communities.
    
3. Walking must also be comfortable. Nobody likes to walk if the destination can only be reached by making lengthy detours, the sidewalks are narrow, the pavement is of poor quality, or the majority of walking time has to be spent with waiting for green light in junctions. High quality public transport also serves convenience, enabling citizens to reach more remote destinations quickly and comfortably, by using public transport for parts or the entirety of the route. More and more cities actually consider public transport as “pedestrian accelerator”.
    
4. Last but not least, walking must also be interesting: we are more likely to walk the same distance if the surrounding is interesting, the route doesn’t lead through lifeless streets, between ugly or dilapidated buildings, or through neglected public spaces, parks.

It is easy to see that improving walkability, creating the conditions of sustainable urban mobility requires carefully designed, complex interventions, and walkability criteria should become integral part of any city’s development strategy. Some walkability projects are undoubtedly expensive - but there is also a multitude of small, simple actions that considerably improve the key conditions of pedestrian traffic already in the short run.

This, however, will be the topic of another article. Stay tuned!

Béla Kézy,
urban development expert