My last piece was about the complex relationship between architectural authority and community agency. It was predicated on my perception that there is an apparent certainty in architectural firms’ statements that good design would lead to transformative changes in social behaviour and hence to good communities. I want to explore this more here, with particular emphasis on walkability, a key concept of urbanists and new urbanism.
What is walkability?
Walkability is a term used widely in professional, research and public debates and is usually seen as a desirable or sought-after characteristic of city neighbourhoods and urban locality planning. It is frequently, and rather uncritically, used as a proxy for better urban neighbourhoods: enhancing walkability offers a solution to a wide range of urban problems, including public health, traffic congestion, pollution, social isolation and environmental justice.
However it is apparent in the literature that the term is used in several very different ways. For some, walkability means a focus on physical features as a means of making walkable environments which are traversable, compact, attractive and safe. For others, the focus is on the outcomes potentially fostered by such environments. Walkability is regarded as a means of improving neighbourhood vibrancy, boosting local economies, encouraging active travel and sustainable transport, and inducing exercise and better health. Broadly, one narrative of walkability is about creating the basic conditions for walking, whilst the other is more clearly focused on purpose around the delivery of community and individual policy goals. Walkability can refer to design features, to social outcomes or to neighbourhood improvement and placemaking.
These various understandings of the term can become problematic when it comes to urban planning and design. What is considered a walkable place on one of these narratives may look very different through another lens, and carry implications for substantially different design approaches and potential conflicts between the differing understandings of the term. The objectives of enhancing walkability are rather different depending on the stress placed on these different interpretations of the term. The first emphasizes physical design; the second stresses environmental improvement, social inclusion and social justice, whilst the third is less about walking as such and more about making a generally healthier, happier better place to be.
Why do people walk?
People walk for many different reasons. Research has identified many motivations for walking including exercise, pleasure, meeting people, relaxation, convenience, enjoying the environment and being outdoors. And people may be walking as part of some other activity such as looking after children or as part of paid work.
There are also a number of common personal barriers including journey length, time available, health and age, carrying shopping, perceptions of safety, as well as, importantly, simply preferring to ride. Environmental barriers which discourage walking include poor lighting, poor air quality, poor connectivity and unattractive destinations.
Creating walkability
The discussion of why people walk makes it very clear that in seeking to create walkable places, building and neighbourhood design is not enough in itself. Many urban design strategies implicitly assume that physical features will make people want to walk. Just as people have a variety of motivations to walk, there are other theories of behaviour change based on personal characteristics, individual behaviors and social contexts in which the physical environment plays a limited role if any. Furthermore a range of factors such as income, cultural values, climate and individual preferences also affect walking. A place may be more or less walkable, or have more or less actual walking depending on these kinds of factors. A walkable place is a complex and contested thing. There are many ways to mix traffic, people, green space and public services and facilities, so walkable environments are not all the same.
Urban designers, architects and planners with an interest in walkability need to be aware of the different narratives described above. What is most walkable differs by walking purpose--whether people are walking to get somewhere, to engage in exercise, to socialize, or enjoy the outdoors, or if walking is part of some other activity. Responding to these different purposes for walking will be achieved in different ways in different kinds of spaces and places. A convenient description of design priorities to meet different reasons for walking is provided by Forsyth (2015).
Ignoring these differences runs the risk of over-simplifying human behaviour and devaluing the emotional, cultural and psychological factors that shape how a walkable space will be used. Blindness to cultural and social context may undermine the walkability which is sought. We need to understand more about how urban design and social processes correlate.
Some examples
Walkability and the street
Streets are the most fundamental public space and the arteries for transit, shopping, socializing and accessing public facilities and services. At the neighbourhood level, Reconfiguring street layouts to prioritize pedestrians and reduce traffic presumes spatial changes will lead to healthier, more sociable urban life. Wide pavements, suitable seating, attractive planting and diverse destinations and easy access to transit are some of the features for more walkable streets.
At street level recent studies have explored how street furniture and layout influence pedestrian behavior, suggesting that built form can predictably shape movement patterns.
Neighbourhood design
There are some well-known studies which illustrate the importance of neighbourhood design for both levels of walking, reasons for walking and patterns of social contact. For example, studies of different areas within the Australian city of Geelong (Boyce 2010) illustrate the importance, among other factors, of having interesting places or destinations to walk to, and the importance of distance and barriers such as roads or railway lines in influencing walking.
Geddes and Vaughan (2014) studied walking patterns and purposes in 3 suburban neighbourhoods in London. They explored the extent to which the built environment (non-domestic land-use and route availability) is a factor influencing walking trips for residents and visitors. In contrast to many other studies which focus separately on how urban form impacts on walking and the reasons why people walk, the study helpfully tries to combine an understanding of both trip purpose and the urban configuration within which the trip occurs to further the understanding of walkability. The study is able to provide an understanding of the different scales on which trips are undertaken and for what reasons, giving an indication of the aspects on which policy might focus in order to influence walkability.
Can planners ‘design’ walkability?
One can detect a series of assumptions implicit in many attempts to create walkability. There is the assumption that form shapes function: wide pavements, open public spaces, or neighbourhood street layouts come with expectations that people will act in particular ways within them. Spaces are conceived with the assumption that particular layouts will produce specific responses such as sociability, public safety or economic sustainability. Designing walkability is a social intervention based on the idea that changing spaces will bring about social transformation.
But there is a critique to be applied to these assumptions. Despite the growing evidence from a range of studies in different cities and countries, there are those who claim that these assumptions, privilege professional expertise over lived experience. There is a danger that community agency is overlooked. There is a tendency to ignore people's capacity to adapt, subvert, or repurpose space in ways not anticipated by formal design. I have already alluded to the risk of cultural blindness when what is considered “effective” or “appropriate” spatial design varies across cultures. Design logic can sideline local knowledge and traditions.
Causation
This line of thinking highlights the relational complexity between design and social behaviour. Critics argue that spaces don’t “cause” behavior—they interact with other social, economic, and cultural forces to produce the lived experience of particular localities. Isolating design as the primary driver oversimplifies lived realities.
So any approach to designing walkability must accept this reality. Gehl is a high profile advocate of starting where the people are and has conducted detailed studies of social infrastructure to observe typical ways in which people respond to and use design features in streets and other public spaces. But even the comprehensive evidence-led approach described by Arup in their report ‘Delivering Sustainable Walkable Neighborhoods’ is full of data on factors and scales of provision to provide sustainable walkable communities fails in my mind to give explicit recognition to community agency as an important and legitimate influence on professional design wisdom.
Further reading
Jan Gehl (1987): Life between buildings: Using Public Space, Island Press
Good on you for writing an original essay without mentioning Jeff Speck— who inadvertently claims ownership of concepts which we all should own . PS I highly recommend Julie.Campoli’s work especially for her talented and dynamic photography.
I have not read Gehl, but I have read popular books influenced in part by Gehl. Street features that facilitate comfortable walking include calm traffic, narrow widths, and zero-setback facades forming a wall. Jeff Speck, speaking specifically to the US, defines walkability in terms of four conditions: the walk must be useful, interesting, comfortable, and safe.
In my upcoming series about residential boarding in 1880 Houston, I consider hotels as logistical arrangements for unmarried male workers, who either chose a job near their residence or chose a residence near their work. Some employees of the hotels lived there as well. In this historical context, walking was not encouraged through planning of infrastructure and architecture forms; rather, it was an organic response to economic and logistical problems of the day. Workers simply arranged for the most efficient and cheapest means of transportation.