Jennie Middleton, “‘Stepping In Time’: Walking, Time, and Space In the City”

I have accumulated a pile of articles on a variety of topics, and I am determined to work through them, somehow. So this morning, before turning to the reading I really should be doing, I’m going to return to Jennie Middleton’s “‘Stepping in Time’” Walking, Time, and Space in the City.” I started this article weeks ago, and then I put it aside. I hate to leave anything unfinished, so I’m coming back to it this morning.

I started reading this article as part of my excursion into debates around walkability. I wasn’t quite finding what I was looking for in this literature, and that might be a sign that it’s not there, that I’m going to have to make up my own theory about walkability and culture. Maybe that’ll work; maybe it won’t. Maybe someone reading this blog will let me know where I can find discussions of cultures of walking and their connection to the walkability of places where people live. For now, I’m stumbling around, reading these articles, hoping to find something that supports my hunch about walking in the city where I live.

That hunch is simply this: walking in this city—except in two places, the park and, to a lesser degree, on the path along the creek, which tends to be used by cyclists rather than pedestrians—is an eccentric activity, and I rarely see other people walking here, because the urban form here discourages walking, since it isn’t, according to what I’ve been reading, particularly walkable. The city where I live lacks population density, street connectivity, and a mixture of land uses (see Stockton et al), all of which promote functional walking. For that reason, it does not satisfy the hierarchy of needs Mariela Alfonzo describes: feasibility, accessibility, safety, comfort, and pleasurability (see Alfonzo). It also lacks what Michael Southworth calls “path context” (Southworth 251), or what I’ve been calling “texture density”: simply put, it tends to be a dull, uninteresting place to walk. Even areas of the big park, Wascana Centre, are dull deserts of lawn, a boring monoculture that can be painful to walk across on a hot summer day—or a day in winter when the temperature is below minus 30. All of these factors are interrelated in complex ways. Because the city lacks walkability, people don’t walk here—they drive instead, partly because driving is cheap and easy (see Forsyth 279)—and, as a result, there’s no culture of walking.

In other words, walking in this place is an eccentric activity; it’s not normal for adults who could drive to ambulate instead. That lack of a walking culture feeds the lack of walkability here. Why should the city invest in sidewalks or signalized crosswalks when nobody would use them or complains about their lack? I’m sure city councillors hear more complaints about potholes than they do about broken or missing sidewalks. More importantly for my purposes, it means that the forms of walking that exist in more walkable places—guided tours, promenades, heritage walks, rural rambles—don’t tend to exist. Many forms of participatory, convivial artistic walking are reactions against those pedestrian modes and models. Are those forms of participatory, convivial artistic walking possible in contexts where the types of walking to which they respond—as parody, as mythographic or psychographic subversion—do not exist? In that case, are the demands that all artistic walking be participatory and convivial perhaps ignoring their own contexts—the walkability of the places where those walking events take place? I mean, what kind of convivial or participatory walking is possible in North American cities, where the distance most people consider walkable is only 1/4 of a mile (Talen 264-66)? How much convivial walking can happen if people can only walk 10 minutes before they feel they’ve gone far enough?

I’ve already blogged about one of Jennie Middleton’s essays, “Walking In the City: The Geographies of Everyday Pedestrian Practices,” but this one, “‘Stepping In Time: Walking, Time, and Space In the City,” with its title resonant of phenomenology, caught my attention. “This paper explores walking and its relationship with and through time and space,” Middleton begins (“Stepping” 1943). Her study “reveals time as a significant dimension of pedestrian experiences” and it argues “that the relationship between walking and time is not one of clock-time passing, as pedestrian policy implies, but is made up of multiple temporalities that emerge out of, and shape, people’s experiences on foot” (“Stepping” 1943). She uses the work of Barbara Adam and Henri Bergson as a theoretical grounding “to suggest that people become aware of their own duration as they move on foot when they are made to wait” (“Stepping” 1943). She discusses space in similar terms; she is interested in “the multiple spatialities that are constituted by and practised through walking” (“Stepping” 1943). For Middleton, urban walking is “an inherently spatiotemporal experience” (“Stepping” 1943). That’s likely true of all forms of walking, too. She also suggests that notions of rhythm provide a way of engaging with the spatiotemporality of walking (“Stepping” 1944).

Middleton wants to get deeper into the experience of walking than the existing policy research on walking, which is “primarily characterised by statistical data, such as travel surveys, pedestrian counts, or local pedestrian audits” (“Stepping” 1944). Theoretical accounts of walking “are characterised by a lack of empirical exploration of the actual practice of walking” (“Stepping” 1944). So Middleton wants a different kind of empirical study. Her research has “three principal aims; first, to explore the relationship between walking and the built environment; second, to explore the many different types, forms, and characters of walking; third, to engage with the social dimensions of pedestrian movement” (“Stepping” 1944). “These research aims were interrogated across a transect through the inner London boroughs of Islington and Hackney,” she continues—I hope she explains what she means by “transect” (“Stepping” 1944). Her study “drew upon a mixed-method approach, including a postal survey, experiential walking photo diaries, and in-depth interviews” (“Stepping” 1944). The diaries asked participants to note when and where and for how long they walked—in other words, “they spatialised their experience of time on foot by producing personalised time-space budgets in the diaries” (“Stepping” 1944). Participants were also encouraged to explain why they were walking (out of necessity or by choice), how they felt about where they were walking, who they were walking with, and how they were walking (“Stepping” 1944). “The task of recording the time-space budgets was something each participant did with ease and consistency, yet a tension emerged between these recorded movements and the accompanying accounts—which made it possible to question whether walking, time, and space are experienced in such linear terms,” Middleton continues (“Stepping” 1944). Photographs of items of interest were taken by the participants using a disposable camera, and they were used as discussion prompts in the follow-up interviews (“Stepping” 1944). “It is by engaging with the discursive organisation of the interview and diary accounts that the multiple temporalities and spatialities of walking are made visible, particularly in terms of how the interviewees and diarists used issues of temporality and spatiality as resources to account for their experiences as urban pedestrians,” Middleton writes (“Stepping” 1944-45).

The policy context of this study is the efforts by UK governments to decrease vehicular traffic by promoting public transport, walking, and cycling (“Stepping” 1945). Often those efforts suggest that walking can save time (“Stepping” 1945). From her research, Middleton has learned that “time is considered a limited resource and a currency not to be wasted” (“Stepping” 1945). “Issues surrounding wayfinding, routes, and shortcuts” emerge in her participants’ diaries, along with “the importance of how people talk about issues associated with time”—for instance, whether one would take a slightly longer but more pleasant route if one were in a hurry because one is late (“Stepping” 1945). The notion of time as a resource emerged throughout the data, but participants might not choose a shorter route if it happened to be less pleasant (“Stepping 1946). The diary accounts “bring into question the temporal assumptions made in transport policy of people’s desire for high-speed travel,” which are “based on the premise that ‘faster is seen to be better’” (Harris et al, qtd. “Stepping” 1946). “Yet is this really the case?” Middleton asks. “Does faster travel ‘achieve more’ than, for example, the ‘slower’ transport mode of walking?” (“Stepping” 1946).

Middleton cites John Urry and Mimi Sheller’s argument that travel time is often considered to be productive, although little attention has been paid to walking as productive time (“Stepping” 1946). “Productive” in this instance refers to the ability to get work done while travelling. Middleton’s participants noted that they are often thinking about their work while walking (“Stepping” 1946). Her participants reported that walking is less stressful than using public transportation, and that walking gives them time to think about the work they have to accomplish (“Stepping” 1947). Middleton suggests the issue of stress draws attention to “the multiple rhythms and rhythmicity of walking” compared to full buses not stopping, for instance, which disrupts the rhythm of getting to work on time (“Stepping” 1947). That disrupted temporal rhythm, and the sense of being late, is a contrast to walking to work (“Stepping” 1947). Of course, if one happens to leave late for some reason, walking can generate similar anxieties about making it to work on time—I know that from experience.

Here Middleton turns to theoretical accounts of time-geography, which tend to see time as linear, and critiques of time-geography as too linear as compared to the way people actually experience time and its rhythms (“Stepping” 1948). “So what are the multiple times and rhythms associated with walking?” she asks. “And are there other ways in which pedestrians experience time than those discussed up to this point—something more than clock time passing?” (“Stepping” 1948). Yes: in the diaries and interviews that were part of her research, “it is possible to discern how the research participants are much more than ‘urban pedestrians’ as the multiple temporalities in their walking patterns make visible their multiple identities as, for example, partners, parents, professionals, and persons in relation to others” (“Stepping” 1949). She continues, “how can further sense be made about the relationship between time and issues associated with identity?” (“Stepping” 1949).

In her participants’ diaries, Middleton sees evidence that “people temporally frame distinctions they make about who they are in relation to others” along with temporally framing other issues as well, such as their own multiple identities (as pedestrians who temper the rhythm and pattern of their walks to work in relation to the situations they have to deal with, but also in terms of their accountabilities to others as a partner, family member, and employee) (“Stepping” 1949-50). She suggests that there are different forms of time, including but not limited to linear time, the time of clocks and calendars, and that there is a disjunction between collective time and the individual felt experience of time (“Stepping” 1950). “‘Clock times,’ ‘collective times,’ and ‘timings’ mutually interact, both shaping and emerging” from the movements of her research participants (“Stepping” 1951). She uses Henri Bergson and Doreen Massey to think about “the continuity, irreversibility, and openness of time” to think about time spent walking compared to time spent waiting (at traffic lights, for instance) (“Stepping” 1951). Time expands and contracts at different moments in a walker’s journey—expanding when the walker is forced to wait (“Stepping” 1951). The walker’s sense of time and of his or her own physicality intersect (“Stepping” 1952).

Middleton notes that Bergson’s privileging of time over space has been critiqued, particularly by Doreen Massey, who argues that they cannot be understood in isolation, and asks how pedestrian movement can be understood in light of these conceptual concerns (“Stepping” 1953). Walking, time, and space are related, because walking is a spatiotemporal practice (“Stepping” 1953). This relationship seems particularly salient in the mental maps pedestrians make of obstacles and difficult places (“Stepping” 1953). Tim Ingold has argued that wayfinding is a complex spatial practice and a means of inhabiting the world (“Stepping” 1953). A wayfarer has an active engagement with the country that opens up along his or her path, according to Ingold, and for Middleton, the mental maps her participants construct are examples of wayfaring (“Stepping” 1954). The experiences of those participants highlights “the complexity of how paths are constructed, imagined, and lived out,” as well as “how spatial practices, such as walking, are also temporal” (“Stepping” 1954). The spatiotemporal complexity of urban walking also “illustrates the significance of identity in terms of how these relations emerge and are configured” (“Stepping” 1955).

Here Middleton returns to the notion that the rhythm of walking is conducive to thinking about other things (particularly work) (“Stepping” 1955). She cites Henri Lefebvre’s notion of rhythmanalysis here as a way of thinking about space, time, and place as interrelated (“Stepping” 1955-56). Her research participants discuss how the rhythm of walking seems to enable them to think, and how different speeds of walking make such thinking easier or more difficult (“Stepping” 1956). For Middleton, “rhythm is a way of understanding the multiple temporalities, spatialities, and corporealities of walking together. In other words, where there is rhythm of sorts, there is something to be said about time and space” (“Stepping” 1956). Thinking about walking “in relation to rhythm provides a productive means for exploring the multiple temporalities and spatialities of walking and the ways in which they interrelate,” and “by engaging with notions of rhythm . . . further sense can be made of how issues associated with identity emerge within participants’ accounts and how they relate to spatiotemporal concerns” (“Stepping” 1957-58).

In her conclusion, Middleton notes that by thinking about the relationship between walking and time and space, “the notion of time has been reconceptualised in relation to how people move on foot from the linear temporal understandings present in current transport and walking policy” (“Stepping” 1958). Her point is “that time is an issue which is relatively neglected in current walking policy documents, or an issue bound up in the concern of transport policy for speed and efficiency,” while in contrast, for pedestrians, “time emerges as an issue of great significance for walking, with temporal concerns being drawn upon as resources in the framing of other issues” (“Stepping” 1958). Walking is more than just a mode of transport, and it should be promoted “as something which resources people’s day-to-day routines, rather than solely being framed as a healthy, sustainable transport choice”—in other words, it is “a resource for organising families, friendships, and households” (“Stepping” 1958). Along with the multiple temporalities of walking, her research “reveals the multiple spatialities that are constituted by and practised through walking. Issues associated with physical mobility difficulties illustrate how walking is an inherently spatial practice, connected to a sense of identity” (“Stepping” 1958). Finally, rhythm is “a productive means for engaging how time, space, and identity interrelate as people walk” (“Stepping” 1959).

I admire Middleton’s success in bringing a dense theoretical context and empirical research and analysis together, but I would need to read Lefebvre or Bergson, and reread Massey, before I could say very much about the results of her research. Walking research goes in surprising directions, and I’m impressed by the range of philosophical and theoretical material Middleton has brought to bear on her research participants’ experiences. Maybe I’ll get to reading Lefebvre and Bergson and Adam for this degree, although I might be better off spending my limited time—it’s a resource not just for walking—on reading more work by Tim Ingold. There are so many directions my research could travel in, and I need to be careful which paths I choose.

Works Cited

Alfonzo, Mariela A. “To Walk or Not to Walk? The Hierarchy of Walking Needs.” Environment and Behavior, vol. 37, no. 6, 2005, pp. 808-836. DOI: 10.1177/0013916504274016.

Forsyth, Ann. “What Is a Walkable Place? The Walkability Debate in Urban Design.” Urban Design International, vol. 20, no. 4, 2015, pp. 274-92. DOI: 10.1057/udi.2015.22.

Middleton, Jennie. “Walking in the City: The Geographies of Everyday Pedestrian Practices.” Geography Compass, vol. 5, no. 2, 2011, pp. 90-105. DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-8198.2010.00409.x.

Southworth, Michael. “Designing the Walkable City.” Journal of Urban Planning and Development, vol. 131, no. 4, 2005, pp. 246-57. DOI: 10.0161/(ASCE)0733-9488(2005)131:4(246).

Stockton, Jemima C. Oliver Duke-Williams, Emmanuel Stamatakis, Jennifer S. Mindell, Eric J. Brunner, and Nicola J. Shelton. “Development of a Novel Walkability Index for London, United Kingdom: Cross-sectional Application to the Whitehall II Study. ” BMC Public Health, vol. 16, no. 416, pp. 1-12. DOI: 10.1186/s12889-016-3012-12.

Talen, Emily. “Pedestrian Access as a Measure of Urban Quality.” Planning Practice and Research, vol. 17, no. 3, 2002, pp. 257-78. DOI:10.1080/026974502200005634.

Ann Forsyth, “What Is a Walkable Place? The Walkability Debate in Urban Design”

In “What Is a Walkable Place? The Walkability Debate in Urban Design,” Ann Forsyth contends that the term “walkability” is vague, because it is used “to refer to several quite different kinds of phenomena” (274). “Some discussions of walkability focus on the means or conditions by which walking is enabled, including areas being traversable, compact, physically enticing, or safe,” she writes. “Others propose that walkability is about the outcomes or performance of such walkable environments, such as making places lively and sociable, enhancing transportation options, or inducing exercise” (274). The term can also be used “as a proxy for better urban places—with some paying attention to walkability being multidimensional and measurable and others proposing that enhancing walkability provides a holistic solution to a variety of urban problems” (274).

Forsyth’s literature review discusses why this confusion is a problem—she suggests that some of the outcomes of walkability are in conflict—and suggests nine different themes that appear in the various definitions of the term. It then proposes “two approaches to defining walkability that nest into a larger conceptualization of the term”:

First is a minimal definition based on having basic conditions for walking (traversability), combined with closeness and minimal safety. Second, the term walkability can be more clearly specified in terms of purpose. In doing this, scholars and practitioners would also more clearly distinguish between walkability features or means, walkability outcomes, and walkability as a proxy for improved, or at least measurable, place-making. (274-75)

Forsyth also argues that factors other than the physical components of a place need to be considered in discussions of walkability (275). Those factors could include the “pricing of relevant alternatives,” such as automobiles; policies and programs supporting walking; and the preferences, motivations, and demographics of the relevant population (275). While health and transportation typically do consider those issues, they are often left out of urban design (275). The latter point begins to reach towards the notion of a culture of walkability: perhaps I’ve been reading articles from the wrong discipline, although that doesn’t explain why my searches for “walking culture” and “culture of walking” in the library’s databases keep coming up short.

Forsyth contends that a confusion exists between the terms “walkable” and “walkability,” and that those conflicting definitions cause problems: “they affect how people try to create walkable places in practice, measure environmental walkability, and assess the costs and benefits of creating walkable environments. Practitioners and researchers may talk with great conviction about how to make environments walkable, but could well be proposing conflicting solutions” (275). The lack of clarity in these discussions “also makes it difficult to develop a theory to guide practice” (275).

Forsyth searched for the terms “walkability” and “walkable” online to find how those terms are defined (275). That process turned up clusters of definitions. The first cluster “includes themes or dimensions related to the community environment”: ideas of traversability (people can walk from one place to another without “major impediments”), compactness (distances to destinations are short), safety, and physically enticing environments (possessing sidewalks or paths, lighting, pedestrian crossings, and street trees, for instance) (276). Physically enticing environments “may also include interesting architecture, pleasant views and abundant services attractive to those who have other choices for getting around and getting exercise” (276).

I’ve been toying with the term “density of texture” to describe those aspects of physically enticing environments: places with a density of texture are interesting in multiple ways (cognitively and sensorially). There are things to look at in such spaces, things to smell and taste and hear and touch, things to think about, surprises and novelty. Repeated visits to such places are repaid with new experiences, because they are in a constant state of flux and development. When I lived in Toronto, most of the walks I made were in spaces marked by a high degree of texture density. In the city where I live now, in contrast, the spaces are marked by a relatively low degree of texture density. Texture density in urban spaces is partly a function of population density, but a walk through an aspen bush or an unbroken grassland is also an experience of texture density, because there is so much to experience in those spaces. In contrast, a walk along a grid road lined with fields of canola or wheat is an experience of low texture density. Walks in spaces with low texture density tend to be considered boring, in my experience, and few people would want to walk in such spaces. Of course, this term is only a theory, and it is indebted to Michael Southworth’s notion of “path context” (Southworth 251-52). Perhaps some social scientist will come up with a method of measuring texture density. I’m not a social scientist, so I don’t have to measure texture density, though I know it when I experience it.

According to Forsyth, the second cluster of definitions speak to outcomes of walking. Those definitions see walkable environments as lively and sociable—“pleasant, clean, and full of interesting people”; sustainable; and healthy, because they induce exercise (276). Texture density might include having people to look at and interact with, but it needn’t be defined by pleasantness or cleanliness. A muddy path through a forest would have a high degree of texture density, but it’s not clean, as your boots will tell you when you get home. The final cluster of definitions uses walkability “as a kind of proxy for better design” (276). Those definitions make “very broad claims about outcomes”: they suggest that “walkability is multidimensional in terms of means” and that “these dimensions are measurable” (276). They also can use walkability as a sign of environments that are considered superior—“slower paced, more human scaled, healthier, and happier”—to others (276).

Forsyth suggests that it’s possible to create a hierarchy out of these nine themes, since the first cluster of definitions tend to be preconditions for those in the second, and that the first and second clusters are combined in the third (276). However, most researchers “instead favor one or two of the definitions, using the same terms (walkable, walkability) to mean quite different things” (276). She also notes that there is a significant overlap between these nine themes, and between walkability itself and related terms, such as “pedestrian-oriented planning or pedestrian-oriented places” (277).

“Some of the confusion over walkability is because of the issue of purposes and motivations,” Forsyth writes. “Walking can be done for many purposes such as transportation, exercise, and recreation. However, such purposes are often mixed” (277). In addition, “each purpose may have a different underlying motivation. For example, exercise or recreational walking may be done for stress reduction, increasing fitness, losing weight, getting out of the house, meeting people, even to enjoy a beautiful place” (277). Each purpose, and each motivation, one would think, “might be suited by a slightly different kind of walkable place” (277-78). Also, some walking purposes are rarely discussed in the literature on walkability, such as walking in “natural” areas for stress reduction, walking that is incidental to some other purpose (such as the walking done by people waiting on tables), or walking that occurs indoors (278). One could add walking that is carried out because of necessity, such as walking by people too poor to afford a vehicle, or by people who live in a place underserved by transit, or by people too young or too old to drive, or by refugees.

“It is unsurprising then that theories of walking are quite varied,” Forsyth continues (279). While some urban design theories assume that certain physical features of the environment will make people want to walk, “the field of health has created a number of different theories of behavior change, many of which focus on personal characteristics, individual behaviors, and social contexts, with the physical environment only incidental” (279). In that literature, everything—even clothing—is environmental (279). “This is an essential insight—that to create ‘walkable’ places, block and neighborhood designs are not enough in themselves,” Forsyth argues. “Rather, other scales of the environment are also important (for example clothing), and other kinds of strategies need to be enlisted such as programming, pricing, and other policies” (279). Restricting parking, making driving expensive, educating motorists, or providing supports to pedestrians might increase the amount of walking that takes place—that’s certainly one reason why dense urban centres (Toronto, in my experience, or London, in the study conducted by Jemima C. Stockton et al) see more walking trips. “Further, such factors as incomes, individual preferences, cultural values and climate also affect walking,” Forsyth states. Oh! A mention of “cultural values”! I want more of that. One cultural value, of course, is the way that walking is seen as normal, on one hand, or eccentric, on the other.

According to Forsyth, the nine themes in the various definitions of walkability “are reflected in the different kinds of planning and design for walkable environments” (279). Some forms of planning and design concentrate on specific components of the environment, such as sidewalks or crosswalks (279). But at the larger level of the neighbourhood or the city, “two main clusters of approaches contend for dominance”: “the fine-grained multi-functional street pattern seen in compact city, New Urbanist, Jane-Jacobs-inspired, mixed-use, transit oriented approaches that cluster people and destinations close together,” usually in a grid pattern; and, on the other hand, “the various forms of superblocks, where vehicular traffic is kept largely to the outside, or moves through with difficulty, and pedestrians infiltrate the center,” such as college campuses, pedestrianized downtowns, and various Modernist designs (279-80). Those two solutions are very different from each other, which leads Forsyth to conclude that “a walkable place is a complex and contested phenomenon” (280). The next section of the article “unpacks some of that complexity” (280).

First, Forsyth tackles the cluster of definitions related to conditions or means. Walkability in the sense of traversable “is about the very basic physical infrastructure to get from one place to another,” about whether “there is a continuous path with some reasonable surface and no major hazards” (280). What is considered traversable will depend on the walker’s age, preferences, whether the walker is encumbered with packages or pushing a stroller, the walker’s level of disability, the weather, time of day, the destination’s attractiveness, the perceived safety of the route, the availability of other options, hilliness, among other factors (280). Traversability, compactness, and safety “are related to a key purpose of walking: to get to a destination,” which is “a dominant view in transportation and an intuitive and commonsense definition” (280).

Compactness or closeness is related to traversability but different: they refer to walkability in terms of distance—whether “destinations are close enough to get to in a reasonable time on foot” (280). Of course, what’s a reasonable time will differ from person to person and from place to place. In any case, Forsyth suggests that a compact place—“with a high density or proximity of destinations and people”—will be considered walkable (280). Compactness also suggests “having an intensity of activities or destinations,” but it also requires “relatively direct and passable routes between those destinations (also raised in the prior theme)” (281). “Thus definitions of walkability as compactness often go beyond distance to include some combination of residential density and land use mixture along with a measure of connectivity (block size, intersection density, measures of gridded versus cul-de-sac street patterns, and the quality of paths),” Forsyth writes. However these definitions raise questions: “how compact a place needs to be and how close the destinations vary with a number of characteristics related to culture, perceptions, and the level of attraction of the destination(s), and the ability to pay for alternative modes of transportation” (281). Look! Another reference to culture! Besides, this definition is “biased toward walking for transportation,” rather than for recreation (281).

Next is safety. A lack of safety, both from crime and from traffic, Forsyth notes, is a barrier to walking (281). Both crime and traffic are important, but Forsyth focuses on traffic. “A Walkable environment in terms of traffic safety has some combination of low traffic volumes or protection for pedestrians (buffers, signalized crosswalks, traffic calming and the like),” she writes (282). This city has many crosswalks without signals of any kind, which are dangerous for pedestrians. Safety is important; according to Forsyth, some authors think it should be placed at the base of the hierarchy of walkability (282).

However, a walkable place “is often defined as something more than just traversable, compact, and safe”: it is also often considered a place “rich in pedestrian-oriented infrastructure, including wide and well-maintained sidewalks, active street frontages, traffic calming measures, street trees and vegetated buffers, marked and signalized pedestrian crossings, benches, way-finding signage, and pedestrian-scaled lighting” (282). These measures of a place being physically enticing, Forsyth’s fourth theme, include the other themes, particularly traversability and safety. Being physically enticing, though, ought to focus on the place being interesting as well as convenient—on the way it draws people to walk (282). Being physically enticing can also include the way a place enables sociability (282). This definition is important in “the media and design professions,” and it “assumes people are motivated to walk by certain forms of design—something that may be more true for some demographic groups, walking purposes, and regional locations” (283).

The next cluster of themes focuses on outcomes (283). “Walking for socializing or just to be out and about in a lively environment near other people has a long history—for example, window shopping or promenading,” Forsyth writes. “In these definitions, when someone says they are improving walkability, or that a place is very walkable, they are referring to a general sense of liveliness, vitality, sociability, or vibrancy” (283). These features could be part of what I’ve been calling texture density, rightly or wrongly, although a walk alone in a forest would also be an experience of texture density, just like a stroll along the Ramblas in Barcelona. The literature that uses this definition of walkability proposes “that more walkable places have higher social capital or provide mental health benefits from interaction,” yet other writers argue that liveliness and walkability are different and need to be treated as such (283). Nevertheless, Forsyth states, “there is a great deal of overlap” between liveliness and walkability (283).

Another theme that focuses on outcomes is the notion of walkability being defined as a sustainable transportation option (283). Walkability is proposed as an alternative to the private automobile (283). Sustainability, Forsyth suggests, “is a complex outcome” and “may also be one of the many dimensions in a more holistic definition” (284).

The last outcome-oriented theme involves the extent to which a walkable environment induces people to exercise as part of their daily routine (284). But what counts as a walkable environment according to this theme isn’t the same for every person, purpose, or place (284). “A core interest in this literature is whether the increased transportation walking that people undertake in some kinds of more walkable locations can translate into increased overall physical activity,” Forsyth writes. “The results are complex. People certainly walk more for transportation in places with higher densities and accessible destinations,” and that may modestly increase physical activity (284). However, she notes that there may also be a self-selection bias at work, where people who want to walk move to places they consider walkable, which would magnify the effects of the environment (284). Also, it’s not clear that walking reduces obesity (284).

“The final set of definitions use walkability as a term to represent places that are complex and well-designed,” Forsyth continues (284). Multidimensionality and measurability is “a complex theme that obviously builds on prior categories” (284). The focus on measurability has “become a thriving industry among researchers, practitioners, and the wider public” (284). Many of the indices and measures used to measure walkability focus on walking for transportation, but some include recreational walking and transportation as well (285).

The last cluster of definitions uses walkability as “a proxy for better environments that generate investment, are more sustainable (in economic and social terms as well as environmental), and that are generally good places to be” (285). Such definitions can be objected to as too broad, but “they are commonly in use and are also the definitions most likely to stress the economic growth potential of walkability” (285). Thus, “this kind of walkability is an indicator of better urban areas that attract redevelopment, population increase and have high livability” (286). “It also avoids the question of incompatible outcomes of walkability, for example, if walkable places have higher housing costs they may have less vibrancy,” Forsyth suggests (286).

In her conclusion, Forsyth calls for “clear, shared definitions” of walkability “to foster dialog and understanding” (286). That might mean creating “a minimal definition of physical walkability focused on path condition/traversability and closeness with some basic level of safety” as “the core requirements for walking” (286). It might mean using “specific terms for different kinds of walkable places related either to features (for example compact) or to outcomes (for example exercise-supporting places)” (286). And it might mean developing “a comprehensive definition that moves beyond the kind of physical place that supports walking to also consider policies, programs, pricing and people (demographics, preferences, perceptions and so on)” (286). That definition might be more holistic but it would also be very complex.

Forsyth goes on to discuss how all of this affects the field of urban design. I’m not interested in that issue—I’m more interested in walking in the city I’ve got, not the city I’d like to have but never will—so I skipped that section and landed on her final thoughts. “Better defining walkability has several benefits,” she states: it would show “that walkable environments are not all the same,” it would illustrate “the biases and assumptions in some popular definitions of walkability,” it would demonstrate “that walkable environments for transportation and recreation purposes sometimes overlap but often do not,” and it would highlight the fact that “while walkability is defined in multiple ways, some major purposes of walking—such as restoration and walking that is incidental to other activities—are not well covered by such definitions and risk being left out of debates” (288). She calls on urban designers and others interested in walkability to “be more conscious about definitions” and to consider the “multiple dimensions” of walking and of walkability (288).

What is useful about this article? The two mentions of culture suggest that walking culture might be a thing, or that culture affects walking and whether people consider a place to be walkable or not. It also suggests the complexity of ideas about walkability. There is also a lengthy bibliography, but I can’t keep reading about walkability forever. Forsyth’s call for clearer definitions of walkability are unlikely to go anywhere, though, since the other terms she complains about as lacking specificity—community, culture, neighbourhood, suburbs—remain indistinct. Complex ideas often are expressed in multiple ways, and that multiplicity can lead to a lack of clarity. Such is life.

Works Cited

Forsyth, Ann. “What Is a Walkable Place? The Walkability Debate in Urban Design.” Urban Design International, vol. 20, no. 4, 2015, pp. 274-92. DOI: 10.1057/udi.2015.22.

Southworth, Michael. “Designing the Walkable City.” Journal of Urban Planning and Development, vol. 131, no. 4, 2005, pp. 246-57. DOI: 10.0161/(ASCE)0733-9488(2005)131:4(246).

Mariela A. Alfonzo, “To Walk or Not to Walk? The Hierarchy of Walking Needs”

The last article I read, Vikas Mehta’s “Walkable Streets: Pedestrian Behavior, Perceptions and Attitudes,” expanded on Mariela A. Alfonzo’s notion of a hierarchy of walking needs. Of course, in the interests of thoroughness, I need to read Alfonzo’s apparently influential article. Perhaps, between Mehta’s work, Alfonzo’s, and Michael Southworth’s, I’ll be able to come up with my own definition of walkability, against which I can measure the places I walk in this city and the places I’ve walked in the UK, where convivial and participatory art walking practices exist in a particular context of walkability that supports a culture of walking that doesn’t—and this is my hypothesis—exist here. But in order to support that hypothesis—and I won’t be able to do the kind of qualitative and quantitative research Mehta did in the Boston area, or Filipe Moura, Paulo Cambra, and Alexandre B. Gonçalves conducted in Lisbon, since I’m not a social scientist and have no ambition to become one—I will first need to continue with my literature survey. Of course, I could just make a bold claim—this city isn’t walkable!—but I think it’s necessary to be a little more scholarly than that. So here goes.

In “To Walk or Not to Walk? The Hierarchy of Walking Needs,” Alfonzo begins by pointing out that the number of walking trips made in the United States dropped by half between 1977 and 1995, to just 5.3% of all trips made (808). Sedentary lifestyles are a health problem, and walking could help address the high rates of obesity in America. Health researchers are attempting “to identify individual-level characteristics that affect a person’s physical activity levels,” while planning researchers are looking at “physical-environmental variables related to walking” (809). “Adopting a narrow approach to a multilevel problem such as the decrease in walking has led to a piecemeal understanding of the factors affecting walking,” Alfonzo writes (809). It is critical, she continues, “to understand how and when individual, group, regional, and physical-environmental factors come into play within the decision-making process”—that is, the process that guides people to decide to walk or not—“not only to understand their roles theoretically but also to better translate research results into effective policies, program interventions, and design guidelines” (817). To address that need, “this article offers a social-ecological conceptual model for how both urban and nonurban form factors may interact to affect walking” (817). First, Alfonzo will offer “a new theory of how to conceptually organize the various urban form (and nonurban form) variables that may affect walking” (817). Then, she will place that theory “into a socio-ecological framework that conceptualizes the walking decision-making process as a dynamic one, with antecedents, mediators, interprocesses (moderators), and multiple outcomes” (817). Then, after discussing her theory more thoroughly, she will discuss the role of choice and self-selection in that model. Finally, she will discuss the potential usefulness of that model (817).

Alfonzo notes that many factors—individual, group, regional, and physical-environmental—affect walking, but “it is not clearly understood which of these factors are most salient, nor is it clear how or whether these factors interact in affecting a person’s level of physical activity” (817). Her conceptual model suggests that these variables affect someone’s choice to walk “at different points in his or her decision-making process,” and that some of those factors are more prominent in that process than others (817-18). To organize those factors, Alfonzo posits the existence of “a hierarchy of walking needs” (818). She applies Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to the process of deciding to go for a walk, proposing five levels of needs that are involved (818). “These needs progress from the most basic need, feasibility (related to personal limits), to higher-order needs (related to urban form) that include accessibility, safety, comfort, and pleasurability, respectively,” Alfonzo writes:

Within this hierarchical structure, an individual would not typically consider a higher-order need in his or her decision to walk if a more basic need was not already satisfied. Thus, for example, if the need for safety is not met, a person would not consider his or her need for comfort or pleasurability when deciding whether to walk because the more basic need, safety, is unmet. In other words, a very comfortable or pleasurable environment would not necessarily compel a person to walk if his or her need for safety was lacking. (818)

Alfonzo points out that not all needs have to be fully satisfied before proceeding to the next level. “A person may only be partially satisfied with his or her need for accessibility, for example, yet still consider his or her need for safety when determining whether to walk,” she states. “Also, the levels within the hierarchy may not always proceed in the order depicted. Some people may reverse the order of some of the levels within the hierarchy. For example, people who are constantly deprived of a need may forgo that need altogether and look to a higher need, despite not satisfying that basic need” (818). In addition, walking can be motivated by simultaneous needs: “a person may be motivated to walk both because the walk is comfortable and because it is pleasurable” (818). The decision-making process might not be conscious, either, and a motivation to do something doesn’t mean that the person will follow through and perform that act (818). Even if all needs in the hierarchy are met, the person might not walk; on the other hand, the person might walk even if some of the needs in the hierarchy remain unmet (819). “Thus, the realization of these five needs is neither necessary nor sufficient to induce walking,” Alfonzo writes. “The choice to walk can occur anywhere on the hierarchy” (819).

For that reason, Alfonzo argues that the hierarchy of walking needs model can’t explain the entire walking decision-making process (819). “Rather, the hierarchy must be placed wihtin the context of a social-ecological framework to fully understand how people make the decision to walk,” she writes (819). She contends that “the hierarchy of walking needs organizes the various urban form variables identified to be significant by existing research into a hierarchy of prepotency,” meaning that “some urban form variables are more fundamental (or necessary) within the decision-making process” (819). In addition, that framework makes feasibility the most basic need, “for which fulfillment is necessary to even consider urban form within the decision to walk” (819).

Here, Alfonzo turns to James Gibson’s notion of affordances, “the set of properties that are present within an environment that allow for the occurrence of a behavior” (819). If, for instance, a surface is firm, horizontal, and appropriately sized, “that surface affords the support necessary for a person to stand on it,” but for standing (a behaviour) to occur, “a person must perceive the affordance that a particular environment or object provides” (819). Therefore, people’s perceptions, habits, and motivations help to determine whether they perceive a particular affordance (819). The affordance of the needs in the hierarchy may affect the decision to walk: “an individual’s perceptions, habits, and motivations will help to determine whether a particular need in the hierarchy is met,” so “people may differ with respect to the affordances they perceive within the environment” (819-21). For instance, one person “may perceive the affordances necessary to meet his or her need for safety, whereas another person may not” (821). In this way, “a person’s perception of an affordance for a particular need may act as a mediator between the hierarchy of needs and the choice to walk” (821).

“Within the social-ecological model of walking, neither the hierarchy of needs nor a person’s perception with respect to the affordances a particular setting may present are a direct link to a person’s decision to walk,” Alfonzo continues. “There are several interprocesses that act as moderators within the walking decision-making process” (821). Life-cycle circumstances—which may include “a person’s individual-level attributes (including biological, psychological, demographic characteristics, etc.), group-level characteristics (including sociological and cultural factors), and the regional-level attributes of his or her walking setting (including topography, climate, geography, etc.)”—“may affect the level within the hierarchy at which he or she is sufficiently satisfied to decide to walk” (821). Those circumstances are “interprocesses or moderators in the decision to walk” (821). Considering them as moderators “creates a more complete, dynamic framework within which to investigate their effect on physical activity” (821). Those complicated characteristics “all moderate the relationship between the hierarchy of walking needs and a person’s decision to walk” (821). Thus, someone who is highly committed to their health and believes that walking is a good source of exercise may only need one of the basic needs to be fulfilled before deciding to walk, while someone who is less motivated by health and exercise may require the fulfillment of higher-order needs before making that decision (821). Other individual factors—attitudes toward driving or automobiles, for instance—may affect “the number of levels that must be met for a person to decide to walk” (823). “A person’s psychological health, expectations, motivations, and other psychological, cognitive, or emotional-level attributes may all affect the point on the hierarchy at which a person decides to walk,” Alfonzo suggests (823).

Demographic variables also moderate the relationship between the hierarchy of walking needs and decisions to walk: for instance, older people walk less than younger people, perhaps because physical mobility limitations or health problems make walking less feasible (823). For that reason, “even if a setting affords the factors necessary to satisfy higher-order needs such as comfort and pleasurability, an older person may still decide not to walk because his or her basic needs are not sufficiently satisfied” (823). Culture, which Alfonzo describes as “a group-level characteristic,” can also affect walking decisions: “a culture’s belief system or set of norms toward walking and exercise may affect the number of needs a person must satisfy before he or she decides to walk” (823). “Members of cultures that stress the importance of walking may require fewer needs than would members of cultures that are more apathetic toward walking or exercise,” Alfonzo writes (823). Sociological variables, “such as societal norms”—how are such norms separate from culture?—and “levels of social support” may moderate the number of needs that have to be satisfied before someone decides to walk (823). In addition, regional-level attributes may act as moderators: “Certain regions may inherently possess conditions that increase an individual’s baseline for walking,” such as places with coastlines or that have temperate climates, which may encourage walking more than inland or frigid climates (823). Alfonzo’s model also delineates outcomes. For instance, “the hierarchy of walking needs, as part of the social-ecological model, also influences both the duration of the walk and type of walking chosen” (823). More needs might need to be met for long walks compared to short walks, she suggests (823). Also, “certain levels of need may be more salient (or necessary) depending on the type of walk or purpose for the walk” (823).

“The social-ecological model of walking presents a dynamic, [causal] model of the decision-making process,” Alfonzo concludes. “Within the model, the hierarchy of walking needs operationalizes and organizes five levels of needs hierarchically and presents them as antecedents within the walking decision-making process” (824). In addition, that model “recognizes the affordances of these five levels of needs (or their perception) as the mediator between the antecedents and the outcome” (824). It also “establishes a person’s life cycle circumstances as moderators between the levels of needs and the outcome variables” (824).

Next, Alfonzo describes the five levels of walking needs in greater detail. Feasibility—“the practicality or viability of a walking trip”—is “the most basic level of need within the hierarchy of walking needs” (824). “For destination trips, feasibility factors may affect the choice between walking and other forms of transportation,” she states, but for strolls, “feasibility factors may affect the choice between taking a walk or not” (824). Regardless of how satisfied someone is with the other levels of the hierarchy, Alfonzo assumes that “if the need for feasibility is not met, then walking will not typically occur” (824). Mobility, time, and other responsibilities are related to feasibility: limited mobility, limited time, or other commitments may reduce feasibility (824).

The next level of need is accessibility: “the pattern, quantity, quality, variety and proximity of activities present, as well as the connectivity between uses” (825). This level of need is about more than just “a simple ratio of retail to residential to office uses” (825). Instead, accessibility factors could include “the presence of sidewalks, paths, trails, or features that provide perceived paths on which to walk”; “actual or perceived barriers to walking,” including physical and psychological barriers to access; and “the number of destinations available within a reasonable walking distance”—although Alfonzo doesn’t believe the destinations question would affect strolling trips, which aren’t tied to specific destinations (826).Neighbourhoods that are close to commercial areas “are associated with the frequency of nonwork destination trips,” she notes, although not with the frequency of strolling trips (827). She suggests that only 10 percent of people are willing to walk half a mile—roughly a kilometre—to a destination (827). For the vast majority of Americans, then, any destination farther away than a 15-minute walk would be considered inaccessible on foot.

Safety is the next level of need. Alfonzo defines safety as safety from the threat of crime (827); for some reason, she doesn’t consider safety from traffic hazards. She believes that safety needs affect strolling more than walking to destinations (827). Graffiti, litter, abandoned or run-down buildings affect perceptions of safety, she suggests, along with some kinds of land uses (bars, liquor stores, and pawnshops) (827). She uses the term “[p]hisical incivilities” to refer to graffiti, litter, vandalism, and poorly maintained buildings, which studies have linked to higher levels of fear of crime (827). Other elements of the urban fabric—the number of street lights, the presence of yard decorations and private plantings, and neighbourhood watch signs—reduce fears of crime (827-28). Narrow streets and stores also reduce fears of crime, while seeing groups of young men hanging around increases it (828). Fear of crime has a strong effect on decisions to walk: “People who felt more afraid in their neighborhoods were significantly less likely to walk than those who felt less afraid,” according to one study” (828).

After safety is comfort, which “refers to a person’s level of ease, convenience, and contentment” (828). “A person’s satisfaction with comfort for walking may be affected by environmental qualities that either facilitate walking or remove factors that might make the walk distressing,” Alfonzo writes (828). Traffic safety—“urban form features that affect the relationship between the pedestrian and motorized traffic”—is part of comfort (828). So are “urban design elements intended to offer protection from unfavorable or extreme weather conditions,” such as canopies and arcades, and amenities such as benches, drinking fountains, and other street furniture (828-29). Traffic-calming strategies increase pedestrian comfort, as do lower traffic volumes and “[s]idewalk comfort,” which might mean sidewalks that aren’t broken or uneven (829). More research on “the actual effects of microscale comfort elements” needs to be done (829).

Finally, pleasurability is the highest need in the hierarchy (829). Pleasurability “refers to the level of appeal that a setting provides with respect to a person’s walking experience” and is “related to how enjoyable and interesting an area is for walking” (829). “Diversity, complexity, liveliness, architectural coherence and scale, and aesthetic appeal may all affect a person’s level of satisfaction with pleasurability,” Alfonzo writes. “Streetscapes, urban design features, architectural elements, and the activity level of a setting may enhance these qualities” (829-30). People prefer to walk in environments they consider pleasurable, something supported by empirical research, and pleasurability can include “diversity or complexity within an environment,” along with “coherence, structural organization,” and a lack of “nuisances” (830). Streets with trees and ground-floor retail are considered pleasurable, as are places that possess a quality of mystery (830). Streets with smaller setbacks—usually older areas of the city—are correlated with more walking, suggesting that large setbacks may be unpleasant for pedestrians because of their effect on people’s perceptions of architectural scale (830). “The relationship between physical and natural environmental attributes and preferences has been researched quite comprehensively,” Alfonzo states, and the pleasurability of those attributes “may be particularly salient both for strolling walking by motivating an otherwise unmotivated person to stroll and destination walking by influencing a person’s decision to walk or drive to a destination” (830).

Of course, Alfonzo acknowledges, all of this presumes that the choice to walk exists. “For destination walking, the choice is between walking and an alternate form of transportation, although for strolling, the choice is between walking and not walking,” but regardless of the kind of walking trip being considered, if there is no choice—if the person must walk—then the hierarchy of needs doesn’t matter (831). “The issue of choice may be particularly salient for children, adolescents, the economically disadvantaged, and the elderly,” she notes, because those groups may have little choice but to walk, even if they feel unsafe or uncomfortable doing so (831).

The question of self-selection bias also exists: do people choose to live in neighbourhoods because they provide “the affordances for them to walk,” or do the characteristics of those neighbourhoods “influence a person’s choice to walk” (831)? “It may be that the hierarchy of walking needs structure comes into play in the selection of one’s neighborhood, rather than every time a person decides whether to walk within his or her neighborhood,” Alfonzo suggests (831).

In her conclusion, Alfonzo contends that the “social-ecological model provided here, along with the hierarchy of walking needs model, provides a framework for understanding how all of these different factors may work together to affect walking behavior” (832). That model “attempts to explain how individual, group, regional, and physical-environmental factors all affect walking at different stages of the behavioral decision-making process” (832). The hierarchy of needs framework “helps to organize existing findings and can suggest fruitful avenues for further research” (832). It can also be useful “in guiding both policy and community interventions,” because measures that address higher-order needs that ignore lower-order needs would not be effective in increasing walking (832). Her model also “underscores the important fact that there is not one universal remedy for increasing walking,” since a variety of “individual, group, regional, and physical-environmental factors come into play” (832). Therefore, it is important for policy makers to “consider their settings and populations carefully and adopt a multilevel approach to program interventions aimed at increasing walking” (832).

The model Alfonzo outlines in this paper is complex, but that complexity is necessary, I think, because decisions about walking are complex. So many factors are involved in those decisions, and Alfonzo attempts to show how they are separate and also connected. As I was reading the article, I found myself wondering whether I could use it to begin analyzing the walkability of the city I live in. That might enable me to consider the presence, or absence, of a culture of walking here. Of course, Alfonzo’s model won’t directly help with that consideration, although I think indirectly it would be possible to argue that places that are walkable because they satisfy all needs in her hierarchy might encourage people to develop habits of walking that might lead to a culture of walking. I’m not sure. I will have to carry on reading on this topic.

Works Cited

Alfonzo, Mariela A. “To Walk or Not to Walk? The Hierarchy of Walking Needs.” Environment and Behavior, vol. 37, no. 6, 2005, pp. 808-836. DOI: 10.1177/0013916504274016.

Mehta, Vikas. “Walkable Streets: Pedestrian Behavior, Perceptions and Attitudes.” Journal of Urbanism, vol. 1, no. 3, 2008, pp. 217-45. DOI: 10.1080/17549170802529480.

Moura, Filipe, Paulo Cambra, and Alexandre B. Gonçalves. “Measuring Walkability for Distinct Pedestrian Groups with a Participatory Assessment Method: A Case Study in Lisbon.” Landscape and Urban Planning, no. 157, 2017, pp. 282-96. DOI:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2016.07.002.

Southworth, Michael. “Designing the Walkable City.” Journal of Urban Planning and Development, vol. 131, no. 4, 2005, pp. 246-57. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9488(2005)131:4(246).

Vikas Mehta, “Walkable Streets: Pedestrian Behavior, Perceptions and Attitudes”

Yes, another paper about walkability: I’m learning about this topic, but slowly. Mehta begins by noting that walking “is largely influenced by cultural factors, by individual circumstances, preferences and characteristics, and by environmental factors” (217). He suggests that “urban designers are concerned with the environmental qualities that make for better places to walk—not only as a physical activity, but also for the sensorial and experiential pleasure that may be derived from such environments,” and for this reason, “the aspects of the environment that impact the sensory and social qualities of the setting are particularly significant to the field of urban design” (217). “In addressing the microscale urban design qualities of the environment,” Mehta states, “this paper is concerned with the perception and effects of safety, comfort, and pleasurability on walking behavior on Main Streets” (217). I’m glad that his focus will be on urban spaces rather than parks or walking trails; although I do walk in parks, my research is more interested in the walkability of streets, since that’s where most artistic walking practices in the UK seem to take place, although the term “Main Street” may refer solely to commercial or retail streets, which might be a limitation to this study. Mehta discusses two other important factors related to walkability in the paper: “usefulness—the ability of the environment to serve basic needs and create place-attachment; and the sense of belonging created by the presence of community places” (217).

Mehta points out that most studies of walkability “aim to determine environmental correlates of walking, considering aspects such as the compactness of development patterns, residential and employment density, access to and diversity of land-use mix, and design features such as shade, scenery, aesthetic characteristics of the local environment, local shopping, distance to retail and the presence of attractive stores and houses” (218). Other studies look at “the transportation infrastructure, access to transit, the accessibility of facilities, access to recreational facilities, intersection density, the presence of sidewalks, recreation space in the neighborhood, street patter and connectivity, and the neighborhood type” (218). Safety, aesthetics, and other neighbourhood characteristics are also studied in relation to walkability (218). Mehta states that this paper “provides a new conceptual framework built on empirical research from this study and existing theoretical models” (218).

Designing for walkability, Mehta suggests, involves thinking of places as providing “sensory stimulation” while supporting “the desired behaviors of its users” (218). He argues that a broadened view of the environment, one that includes physical, social, psychological, and cultural factors that help to determine behaviour, is necessary. Mehta cites Alfonzo’s research, which argues for “a transdisciplinary theoretical model to explain how individual, group, environmental, regional, and other factors affect walking” (218-19). Alfonzo’s work (and once again, I find myself hating the way APA format omits the first names of authors) proposes a model of walking that consists of a hierarchy of five levels of needs in the decision-making process of walking: “feasibility, accessibility, safety, comfort, and pleasurability” (219). Michael Southworth, whose work I’ve also discussed here, proposes six criteria of walkability: “connectivity, linkage with other modes, fine-grained land-use patterns, safety, path quality, and path context” (219). Three of Southworth’s criteria—connectivity, linkage with other modes, and fine-grained land-use patterns—“seem more appropriate for capturing environmental features related to walking because they distinguish between path network at a neighborhood scale, the transportation at the city scale, and the grain of the land-use at the neighborhood scale,” and his notions of path quality and path context “cover similar grounds as comfort and pleasurability in Alfonzo’s” (219). “Both models discuss the importance of an individual’s ability to get to a destination, their perceived safety, the variety of the land uses, and the comfort and sensory pleasure offered by the walking environment,” but neither considers “the importance and relevance of usefulness of the land uses and activities on the path or destination of the walking environment” or “the significance of destinations that are perceived as places for social gathering on walking behavior” (219). For that reason, Mehta wants to consider “the significance of the usefulness of the environment and of places of social meaning on walking behavior” (219). For that reason, this paper “tries to capture the microscale-level physical, land use, and social characteristics that influence walking” in order to answer one question: “What are the microscale environmental characteristics and criteria that influence walking behavior on Main Street?” (219).

For Mehta, the street’s characteristics consist of physical factors (including things like wide sidewalks, trees, canopies, interesting and engaging storefronts, signage, street furniture, and what buildings look like), land-use factors (the variety and range of businesses and the uniqueness of the goods and services they sell), and social factors (community-gathering places, the presence of people and activities, and safety) (219). These factors influence the perceptions of the street’s users, along with cultural factors and the user’s individual associations and background (219). Together, the user’s perceptions and the characteristics of the street “affect the overall perceived quality of the street,” which Mehta sees as having seven separate categories: “feasibility, accessibility, usefulness, safety, comfort, sensory pleasure, and sense of belonging” (220).

Next, Mehta discusses the literature on walkability using his own categories. He notes that Alfonzo sees feasibility and accessibility as “the first-order needs of walking” (220). A walker must have the time and ability to make a journey on foot: that’s the meaning of feasibility (220). Accessibility, on the other hand, “includes the ability of a person to be able to access the destination; the distances to a destination; the physical and perceived barriers to walking to a place; and the connectivity between land uses” (220). Southworth’s criteria of connectivity and linkage with other modes (220). Mehta assumes that the “first-order needs of feasibility and accessibility have already been met for the person making the walking trip to Main Street”—so that pedestrian has the time and ability to walk, the distance to the destination is short, and there are no physical or other barriers to that destination—so they aren’t considered as part of this study.

Mehta sees usefulness as “the ability for the environment to satisfy the individual’s basic day-to-day needs for shopping, eating, entertainment, and so on” (220). This is similar to Southworth’s notion of fine-grained land-use patterns (220). Mehta notes that people are more likely to walk to places where there are places to eat and shop, but the quality of the goods and services on offer also makes the environment useful and desirable for walking (220). Usefulness makes the environment meaningful to the individual (220). Usefulness can encourage frequency of use, which “translates into a familiarity with the environment and becomes a routine that creates a sense of place and place-attachment for the users of the environment” (220). He suggests that space-time routines that generate familiarity were at the heart of Jane Jacobs’s observations on Greenwich Village in New York (220). For that reason, “usefulness of the street results in possibly satisfying higher-order needs that encourage walking to the Main Street” (220).

Safety—both real and perceived—affects and is affected by the use of the environment (221). Environmental characteristics—the physical condition and maintenance of the environment, its configuration of streets and spaces, the types of land uses, the changes that have been made to the environment, the presence or absence of people (and the kind of people there)—all affect perceptions of safety (221). Safety from traffic is also important: reducing street widths and speed limits, introducing traffic calming measures, barriers between pedestrians and the street (parked cars, trees, plantings) all increase real and perceived safety (221).

Comfort, both environmental and physical, “may be affected by myriad factors including weather, physical conditions, perceived levels of safety, familiarity of the setting and people, convenience, and so on,” Mehta writes (221). In this study, though, Mehta limits comfort “to the physical and environmental [e]ffects of the environment to provide the ability for a person to conduct the tasks of walking on Main Street” (221). The street environment design needs to be “anthropometrically and ergonomically sensitive”; wide sidewalks, trees, shade, shelter, a path free of obstacles, and traffic calming all contribute to comfort (221).

Sensory pleasure “depends on various stimuli perceived from the environment—from the lights, sounds, smells, touches, colors, shapes, patterns, textures, and so on, of the fixed, semi-fixed, and movable elements that make up the street” (222). A moderate level of complexity helps to create sensory pleasure, as do variety, novelty, order, and coherence (222). All aspects of the environment—the windows and canopies and awnings of buildings, for instance, the street and the sidewalk, the people and their movements—help generate sensory pleasure (222). Mehta states that “people prefer public open spaces that provide a moderate level of culturally acceptable sensory stimuli resulting in a complexity that heightens interest without becoming over-stimulated and chaotic” (222). What does “culturally acceptable” mean in this context, though? That’s a very loaded term.

A sense of belonging to community places is another factor that, Mehta argues, is ignored by existing theoretical models of walkability (222). “Sociologists have long emphasized the significance of the symbolic dimension of shared experiences of people in a neighborhood,” he writes (222). Places can help to generate that symbolic dimension: long-standing small local businesses, for instance, or informal community-gathering places, can create a sense of belonging and attachment (222).

Mehta concludes that this literature review indicates “that the characteristics of land use and the physical and social environment are all important to provide a useful, safe, comfortable, pleasurable, and meaningful setting for people to walk in urban public spaces” (222). This study builds on that research, he continues, by examining “the associations between the characteristics of the environment on the neighborhood Main Street and walking behavior—not only as a physical activity, but also for the overall experience it offers to the pedestrian” (222). In addition, Mehta embraces a subjective measurement on the effect of environmental characteristics on human activity, because those subjective perceptions “may be as important as the objectively measured environmental characteristics” (222).

Next, Mehta describes his methodology: the study looks at three streets in two cities and one town in the Boston area (223). These are all places with older buildings (built more than 40 years ago) which are built to the sidewalk without setbacks and that are up to four stories in height (224). The streets have seen public improvements to become more pedestrian friendly, including widening sidewalks, curbside parking, tree planting, and the installation of street furniture (benches, bicycle racks, garbage cans, street lighting) (224). All three streets are served by public transit and have a combination of independently owned businesses and national chains (224). In addition, all three streets have “a myriad of uses,” from various kinds of housing, stores offering different goods and services, and public institutions (224). They are all set in primarily residential neighbourhoods and are near university campuses (224). “In addition, the people of the Boston metropolitan area consider these destinations for shopping, dining, and entertainment,” Mehta writes (225).

For the study, 19 blocks in those three areas were selected “to achieve a range in the microscale-level physical, land-use and social characteristics,” which translated in practice into “selecting blocks with a range in the physical size and type of businesses on a block; a range in the variety of businesses on a block; a range in the presence or absence of community-place on a block; a range in the presence or absence of street furniture on a block; and a range in the degree of interesting and engaging storefronts, signage and displays on the block” (225). The neighbourhood-scale characteristics—“the housing and commercial density of the area, the type of people living in the area, the proximity to major natural features such as a water’s edge, and major uses such as a university or a cultural institution, or a transit hub”—remained “common” (225). I’m not entirely sure if that means common to the selected blocks in a given area, or common between the three areas, but I think it means the former, because Mehta tells us that “the selected blocks in each of the three study areas were part of the same urban context with similar neighborhood-scale characteristics of the environment” which “allowed for minimum variation in the macro-scale factors among the selected blocks in a study area” (225-26).

Mehta counted “all pedestrians crossing a randomly selected imaginary line in both directions at various locations on each block for 10 or 15 minutes” more than once and averaged the results (226). In all, he observed the blocks for 71 hours and counted 33,932 pedestrians between April and October 2005. In addition, both a face-to-face survey and interviews were conducted (227). In the survey, “users were asked to rate their familiarity with the block; their perceived daytime and nighttime safety on the block; their perceived pedestrian-friendliness of the block; their perceived range of goods and services on the block; and so on” (227). The interview asked different questions, such as “What has changed in the area/neighborhood in the last few months or years?” and “Do you use this block more often compared to other blocks on this street?” (227). Those surveys and interviews were conducted on four blocks that were considered “most representative of each study area,” so “each participant responded to four standard questionnaires that included a survey and open-ended interview questions” (227-28). I have no idea whether this methodology makes sense for social scientists, but the paper passed its peer review, which must mean something.

The results of this activity indicated that more pedestrians walked on blocks that were close to transit stops, but “transit stops were not the only factor determining the volume of pedestrian flow”: instead, the “perception of usefulness, safety, comfort, sensory pleasure and sense of belonging contributed to the number of persons walking on a block” (228). Those aspects of the blocks were determined through the interviews (228).

Mehta goes over those interview results in detail, but because I wanted to get to his discussion of those results, so I skipped ahead. “The findings reveal a hierarchy of needs at the microscale that support walking behavior,” Mehta writes, noting that “people perceived differences in physical, land-use, and social characteristics across blocks on the same Main Street, and this affected their walking behavior” (240). In addition,

people preferred blocks that had a variety in the mix of uses and stores, particularly those that served daily needs; blocks that had gathering places where they could meet their friends and also be able to see other people and activities; blocks that had a distinctive character or ambiance; blocks that were pedestrian-friendly and visually interesting; blocks that had stores and businesses with good service; and blocks that had a stores that were perceived as destinations. (240)

Thus, all five of Mehta’s aspects—“usefulness, safety, comfort, pleasurability, and sense of belonging”—were important to the users of these streets (240). “However,” he continues, “people suggested that usefulness, sense of belonging and pleasurability (in that order) were most important to them in the hierarchy of walking needs” (240). Safety and comfort may have been less important, because all three streets had been upgraded recently to make them comfortable and pedestrian-friendly (240).

However, those aspects are not the only reason people might decide to walk: “The cultural acceptance of that behavior”—in this case, walking—“is essential for it to occur as a common activity” (240). Mehta assumes that walking on Main Street is culturally acceptable in all three areas, but while “walking behavior took place on the blocks that offered limited usefulness, comfort, sources of sensory pleasure and places to commune,” that behavior was “a necessary activity” rather than “an optional or social activity” (240). “This assumption is consistent with Alfonzo’s model,” Mehta continues—and Alfonzo’s article is waiting for me to read—but Mehta suggests that both usefulness and a sense of belonging ought to be incorporated in that hierarchy of needs (240).

In his conclusion, Mehta addresses policy and design issues suggested by his findings. For instance, he suggests that “Main Streets will be more walkable if they are planned and designed to have businesses that are useful to the people who use these streets; if they are managed to support community-gathering places; and if they integrate places of social meaning” (242). But can planning and design really “attract and encourage a variety of businesses” and “recognize, support and preserve any community-gathering places that act as destinations and provide a sense of belonging for users of the main streets” (242)? Aren’t those features of urban streets formed by organic processes? Perhaps zoning and bylaws might play a role, but how much of walkable spaces is the result of history and luck? How much can be mandated by city governments or their planning departments?

Mehta’s article is interesting, if only because his research sites are so different from the city where I live, which might suggest its lack of walkability. Certainly most of the blocks where I find myself walking here offer limited usefulness, comfort, sources of sensory pleasure or places where community members might gather. Instead, most of this city is designed around the car—and the areas of the older city that might provide the density necessary to support the urban fabric Mehta examines here lack usefulness and comfort. My big question—whether this city’s reliance on the private automobile and its lack of walkability present obstacles to the existence of a culture of walking—remains unanswered. I’m also still wondering whether a culture of walking is necessary to support or feed the kinds of participatory or convivial art walking practices that seem to be so central in the UK. That’s my biggest question, and I may have to make up my own answer.

At some point, of course, I’m going to have to stop gathering string on this topic, but perhaps I should continue reading through the articles I’ve gathered and also look at the work of Jane Jacobs and Henri Lefebvre, as a Facebook friend has suggested. All I can do is pursue this tangent until I either find answers to my questions or realize that I’m going to have to provide my own answers. How frightening—it’s always more comfortable to footnote something in an academic paper, because someone else’s idea always feels more valid than one’s own—but then again, how liberating.

Work Cited

Mehta, Vikas. “Walkable Streets: Pedestrian Behavior, Perceptions and Attitudes.” Journal of Urbanism, vol. 1, no. 3, 2008, pp. 217-45. DOI: 10.1080/17549170802529480.

Southworth, Michael. “Designing the Walkable City.” Journal of Urban Planning and Development, vol. 131, no. 4, 2005, pp. 246-57. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9488(2005)131:4(246).

Filipe Moura, Paulo Cambra, and Alexandre B. Gonçalves, “Measuring Walkability for Distinct Pedestrian Groups with a Participatory Assessment Method: A Case Study in Lisbon”

The last article I read, Michael Southworth’s “Designing the Walkable City,” defined walkability and explained why it is both important and, for the most part, absent from contemporary North American cities; in this article, the three co-authors suggest a way of measuring walkability. “We believe that beyond adequate pedestrian accessibility indicators, attractiveness indicators are key in the process of walkability assessment,” they write (283), suggesting that they may be focusing on something not unlike the phenomenon that Southworth calls “path context” (251-54). For that reason, “measuring walkability with an additional attractiveness perspective besides pedestrian accessibility enriches the modelling and evaluation procedure” (283). “However, we argue that walkability cannot be definable as a single and universal entity,” they argue. “In fact, the built environment factors that affect walking likely differ according to other factors: pedestrian characteristics (young/old, male/female, fit/unfit), walking purpose (utilitarian/leisure), urban context and other environmental and cultural aspects,” and “integrated and structured analysis that bring together these concerns is still lacking” (283).

In this paper, the co-authors aim “to present a participatory walkability assessment framework for distinct pedestrian groups,” which they call IAAPE (Indicators of Accessibility and Attractiveness of Pedestrian Environments), which “aims to support urban planning and design for more walkable environments” (283). They explain the IAAPE tool and present a case study of two districts in Lisbon’s central area in which they applied that tool and measured the walkability of the streets. It sounds interesting, although I have trouble imagining central Lisbon as being anything other than a pedestrian’s paradise.

First, though, comes a literature review. “If walking is a simple way of getting around, addressing the variety of environmental factors that may encourage or deter walking is neither that simple nor unanimous,” the co-authors state. “The complexity of relations between the built environment factors and walking behaviour, the role of individual perceptions, the importance of attitudes, lifestyle and transportation alternatives lead to an intricate frame of reciprocal influences that researchers are just starting to untangle” (283). There are several methodological issues that have yet to be addressed in relation to measuring that complex web of connections. The co-authors list many measurement methodologies that have emerged from different disciplines, but they suggest that in most of those tools, the evaluation criteria are dispersed and not clearly structured, “resulting in the use of a simple additive model of scores from arbitrarily selected evaluation criteria” (284). Determining the critical evaluation factors and their relative importance is a key issue (284). The co-authors accept research that identifies the so-called five C criteria—Connectedness, Convenience, Comfort, Conviviality (both aesthetic and social pleasure), and Conspicuousness—and add two more: Coexistence (“the extent to which the pedestrian and other transport modes can coexist at the same time and place with order and peace”) and Commitment (“the extent to which there is evidence of commitment, liability and responsibility towards the pedestrian environment, by local communities and administration”) (284). “As with other classifications, some of these factors have a fairly straightforward understand whilst others overlap,” they note (284).

Surprisingly, the co-authors acknowledge that “there is not a ‘one size fits all’ walkability measure. Instead it varies with trip purpose, pedestrian group and are subject to local conditions, being difficult to adopt results and tools originated in many different urban contexts,” particularly between European and North American or Australian cities (284). “In this paper, a participatory and CIS-based walkability assessment framework has been developed to put into practice the 7C’s layout, which is able to address different scales (city, neighbourhood and street), different pedestrian groups (adults, seniors, children, and people with mobility impairments), and different trip purposes (utilitarian, leisure),” the co-authors write. “The IAAPE framework was developed to support and be used by local authorities and urban planning and design practitioners, by involving the main stakeholders since the beginning of the assessment framework that is described in the next section” (285).

That next section introduces the IAAPE assessment framework. This section is a deep dive into their methodology, and while I’m sure it’s important, I’m also sure that I lack the statistical background to do more than get a headache here. For that reason, I skipped ahead to the results section of the article—which reflects on the validity of the IAAPE assessment tool, rather than the Lisbon neighbourhoods they tested using that tool. Then they discuss the validation of that tool in more detail, which involves a thorough explanation of what actually happens: “on-foot street auditing” by a team of six auditors (292) and a survey in which residents were asked to identify the most and least pedestrian-friendly streets in their neighbourhoods (293). The data produced by both methods were compared; the results of that comparison validate the process (293). It seems that the “on-foot street auditing” tended to agree with the perceptions of residents (294).

The co-authors suggest that issues like street cleanliness and maintenance, on the one hand, and traffic, on the other, are “the most important factors to rate negatively a street”; they are related to Commitment and Coexistence (294). They also suggest that measuring tools should “include a subtractive component to better reflect negative impacts on the perceived walkability” (294). In their conclusion, the co-authors suggest that the IAAPE assessment framework “brings new contributions for the walkability evaluation in six main aspects” (295). Again, this discussion is highly technical and not that helpful to me. On the one hand, I’m glad people are doing this research, and would be curious to see how Regina would score on a similar walkability study, although the co-authors warn against simply borrowing their methodology, which was designed for Lisbon, and using it to measure walkability in another city (295). Without that kind of detailed assessment, however, my sense of Regina’s walkability will remain idiosyncratic, anecdotal, and personal. I’m fine with that, and although social scientists would not be, I’m not that concerned, because I’m not a social scientist. In addition, the attractiveness indicators they co-authors consider seem to have little to do with attractiveness; they only consider sidewalk cleanliness, but surely the aspect that Southworth calls “path context” covers a lot more ground. To be honest, this article may have been less useful than I’d hoped, but it’s also true that I’m tired after a long day of reading and hoping for broad strokes and clear outcomes rather than a discussion of methodology. You can’t pick a winner every time.

Works Cited

Southworth, Michael. “Designing the Walkable City.” Journal of Urban Planning and Development, vol. 131, no. 4, 2005, pp. 246-57. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9488(2005)131:4(246)

Michael Southworth, “Designing the Walkable City”

My brief (I hope) exploration of the concept of walkable cities continues with Michael Southworth’s “Designing the Walkable City.” Southworth notes that urban planning is shifting away from “auto-centric” forms “to mandated accommodation of the pedestrian and bicycle in federally supported transportation projects” (246). (He’s an American, so he’s not talking about federally supported transportation projects in Canada.) “Pedestrian and bicycle needs are now considered in transportation planning at all scales, from local streets to regional arterials,” he writes (246). In this paper, Southworth “considers pedestrian needs in urban and suburban environments, focusing on the performance dimensions and criteria for a walkable city” (246).

Southworth distinguishes between the ways that transportation planning and urban planning have developed over the previous century: urban planning looks at “the concrete experiential qualities of the built environment, generally at small to medium scale,” whereas transportation planning thinks about “more abstract function and efficiency, particularly for the motorist, at the scale of cities and regions” (246). Urban planning is about “‘micro’ variables,” while transportation planning is about “abstract ‘macro’ variables” (247). Transportation planners rarely consider “quality of the environment and user perceptions,” and they treat pedestrians “negatively because they slow dow the flow of vehicles at street crossings” (247). “The consequences for the urban environment and for pedestrians have been enormous,” he notes (247). Regina seems to have had a lot of transportation planning, but no urban planning, according to Southworth’s definitions.

And yet, walkability “was essential in cities before the automobile era,” since “everyone depended upon ready access by foot or slow moving cart, wagon, or carriage for access to jobs and the marketplace” (247). “Activity patterns had to be fine grained, density of dwellings had to be relatively high, and everything had to be connected by a continuous pedestrian path network,” Southworth writes, giving medieval cities as an example (247). “Industrial cities of the 19th century, too, maintained good walkability, since most workers did not have access to horse-drawn carriages or even streetcars,” he continues, noting that those cities were not healthy “due to poor air and water quality and lack of sanitation” (247). Contemporary cities contribute to public health problems in other ways, by “encouraging and supporting a sedentary life style dependent upon the automobile” (247).

“High speed transport and the quest for efficiency killed the walkable city,” Southworth continues, with each advance in transportation technology having a “negative impact on the pedestrian environment”—particularly the automobile, which become important in the 1920s, along with Modernism: “The pedestrian environment was ignored in favor of the automobile, which allowed things to be much farther apart” (247). In addition, “the fine grained pedestrian network” was broken up by “hazardous high speed traffic,” which “imposed barriers to free movement on foot” (247). Thus, “the street lost its intimate scale and transparency, and became a mere service road, devoid of public life” (247). In addition, Modernist planning “separated pedestrians from the automobile, shunting them off to raised plazas, skywalks, barren ‘greenways,’ and sterile pedestrian malls” (247). The results “have been codified in the transportation and street design standards that we struggle with today” (247). Indeed, in the contemporary “postindustrial city it is impossible for the pedestrian or bicyclist to navigate frequently” (247). The pedestrian-friendly interconnected grid of streets has been abandoned in areas of cities built after the 1950s, block sizes are too large to allow for a variety of route choices, and “land use patterns are coarse[,] with activities widely spaced and segregated by type” (247). “Streets are often over scaled and inhospitable to pedestrians and frequently lack sidewalks in order to reduce infrastructure construction and maintenance costs,” Southworth writes. “The entire system has been designed for the convenience of the motorist” (247). Southworth is describing the city where I live.

Next, Southworth defines walkability: it is “the extent to which the built environment supports and encourages walking by providing for pedestrian comfort and safety, connecting people with varied destinations within a reasonable amount of time and effort, and offering visual interest in journeys throughout the network” (248). Most of Regina lacks those qualities. “A highly walkable environment invites walking by means of a richly connected path network that provides access to the everyday places people want to go,” he continues. “It is safe and comfortable, with streets that are easy to cross for people of varied ages and degrees of mobility. Spaces are attractive and engaging to be in, with street trees or other landscape elements, coherent but varied built form, and visual connection with the life of the place” (248). In addition, the “pedestrian network links seamlessly, without interruptions and hazards,” and the “path system is sufficiently complex to be explorable over time, offering varied visual experiences with repeated encounters” (248). A walkable city also “supports walking for utilitarian purposes such as shopping or the journey to work, as well as for pleasure, recreation, and health” (248). Again, Regina isn’t like that. It seems safe to say that it’s not a particularly walkable place.

“The benefits of increasing walking are widely recognized,” Southworth writes (248). “Walkability is the foundation for the sustainable city; without it, meaningful resource conservation will not be possible,” since walking is a “green” mode of transportation (248). Walking can be utilitarian, but it can also be recreational or social as well (248). It can also promote physical and mental health (248). Studies have shown that people who live in places where the urban fabric discourages walking are more likely to be obese and have hypertension than those who live in more compact and walkable areas (249). That research was controversial, and Southworth suggests that more systematic research is needed to understand whether the correlation reflects causation. In addition, “studies have suggested that quality of the walking environment influences the amount of walking people will do” (249). Other factors influence how much people walk. The “[f]unctionality of the network” is one important factor, but so too are weather, terrain, and safety (from crime and dangerous traffic), as are personal factors such as age and health (249). “Finally, visual interest along the path network is important,” Southworth writes. “A walk that is pleasurable, offering changing scenes and social encounters, is more likely to be repeated than one that is boring or unpleasant. This has been the least understood and most ignored variable in walkability planning and design” (249).

“What are the performance dimensions of a walkable city?” Southworth asks (249). Distance to destinations is the most important factor; most Americans will not walk more than 1/4 of a mile to a destination (249). Is that learned behaviour? Could it change? If walking were more pleasant and pleasurable, would people walk more? Or are we just lazy and dependent on our cars? Other studies, however, suggest that the quality of the path network is more important than distance (249). A walkable path network has some if not all of these qualities: it connects with places people want to go; it is linked to transit; it has “[f]ine grained and varied land use patterns”; it is safe; the path is of high quality, “including width, paving, landscaping, signing, and lighting”; and the “[p]ath context, including street design, visual interest of the built environment, transparency, spatial definition, landscape, and overall explorability” are of high quality (249). “In order to effectively plan and design for urban walkability, it will be essential to make the criteria operational and introduce them into practice,” Southwork states (249).

Now Southworth goes into those six attributes in more detail. “Connectivity of the path network is determined by the presence of sidewalks and other pedestrian paths and by the degree of path continuity and absence of significant barriers,” he writes (249). “[A]s patterns become finer grained and more interconnected, blocks become smaller with higher connectivity of paths, and the ratio of access for the ‘crow fly’ measure to actual walking approaches one,” the path network becomes more walkable (249). Southworth suggests that “a high density of intersections and small block sizes usually correlates with a high degree of connectivity,” whereas barriers to pedestrian access, including “cul-de-sacs and dead end streets, or busy arterials, railroad or power line rights-of-way, rivers, or topographic features must be minimized” (249-50). However “[m]ost of the postindustrial suburban landscape suffers from lack of pedestrian connectivity” (250). That problem can be addressed through retrofits, however, such as pedestrian bridges over highways (250).

Transit connections provide pedestrians with links to the larger city or region, but stations and stops need to be no more than 1/4 to 1/2 mile apart, typically a 10 to 20 minute walk (250). Moreover, walkable neighbourhoods or cities have “an accessible pattern of activities to serve daily needs” (250). “This means that one can reach most local-serving uses on foot within 10-20 min or up to 1/2 mi,” Southworth writes (250). The term “local-serving uses” includes shops, cafés, bakeries, day-care centres, fitness centres, schools, libraries, and parks (250). While surveys show that most Americans would like to be able to walk to these places, “most postindustrial development in the United States has lost walkability and the necessary fine-grained pattern of uses so that it is impossible in many areas to reach even one everyday activity on foot within 1/2 mi” (250). It is difficult, legally and practically, to make such low-density places into high-density ones without carrying out a major transformation of the city (250).

Safety may be “the best understood and most fully developed aspect of walkability” (250). “In most United States cities transportation and land use policies have made walking and bicycling inconvenient, unpleasant, and dangerous,” Southworth writes, because those cities are organized around automobiles, and “[e]nvironments that support fast and efficient auto travel are not enjoyable, safe, or interesting for pedestrians and bicyclists” (250). That lack of safety is reflected in the fact that pedestrians are 23 times more likely to get killed in traffic accidents than are automobile passengers (250). Traffic calming can reduce accidents, but in the previous 20 years the number of children and adolescents walking or biking to work has dropped by 40 percent, mostly because parents do not think walking or biking are safe (250-51).

The next attribute, path quality, begins with a description of the city where I walk:

Perhaps the least hospitable pedestrian path is the auto oriented commercial strip, a treeless expanse dominated by several lanes of noisy traffic, polluted air, glaring lights, and garish signs. The street has few, if any, designated crosswalks and is much too wide for a pedestrian to cross safely. The chaotic frontage is poorly defined, lined by blank big boxes, large parking lots, and drive-in businesses. Haphazard utility poles and boxes, street lights, traffic control signs, hydrants, mail boxes, and parking meters dominate the sidewalk, which is constantly interrupted by driveways to businesses. (251)

Add broken or missing sidewalks, and that’s a description of many streets in Regina. However,

the ideal pedestrian path will provide for the comfort and safety of pedestrians of varied ages and physical abilities. It should be continuous, without gaps, and should have a relatively smooth surface without pits, bumps, or other irregularities that could make walking and wheelchair access difficult or hazardous. It should be at least wide enough for 2-3 people to pass one another or to walk together in groups, and much wider in very urban situations. Terrain can be a significant factor in walkability, especially in cities with snow and ice. Steep hills . . . may require steps or even railings in sections to assist pedestrians. Encroachments into the pedestrian right-of-way such as utility poles, mail boxes, or newspaper vending machines can compromise walkability by constricting the pathway or blocking crossings. Landscape elements such as planted verges help insulate the pedestrian from the moving traffic, and street trees provide protection from the sun and help define the street space. Pedestrian scaled path lighting can enhance nighttime walking and provide a greater sense of safety. (251)

No wonder many senior citizens walk in malls, which are safer, more comfortable, and more sociable than the streets outside (251). And Southworth’s brief comment about winter conditions reminds me that the city where I live–a city where winter fills six months of the year–lacks a bylaw that would force residential property owners to shovel the sidewalks in front of their homes, and does not enforce the bylaw that requires commercial property owners to clear their snow.

The final attribute Southworth examines is path context, “the most problematic and least developed of walkability criteria” (251). “A safe, continuous path network in a monotonous physical setting will not invite pedestrians,” he states. “The path network must engage the interest of the user,” through its visual interest and through the design of the space through which the path network travels (251). Transparency is particularly important: “A transparent environment allows one to sense the social and natural life of a place through first hand observation” (252). But so too is “detail design and attention to the special qualities of places,” which tends to be ignored in favour of “repetitive architecture and uniform street design standards devoted to the automobile,” which “have produced neighborhoods with little pedestrian appeal” (252). Places that look boring are going to be boring places to walk, in other words. I would describe this quality in terms of texture: places that are dense, complex, and densely textured—whether that texture is made up of natural features or a built environment—are going to be rewarding and interesting places to walk.

There is no one rule about the path context of walkable environments that applies everywhere; “[s]uccessful approaches will vary by culture, place, and city size” (254). “Nevertheless,” Southworth continues, “a few attributes are likely to contribute to the quality of path context in most urban and suburban settings: scale of street space, presence of street trees and other landscape elements, views, visible activity and transparency, scale, and coherence of built form” (254). “The most important thing,” he states, “is to engage the pedestrian’s interest along the route” (254).

Southworth concludes with actions that are necessary to improve walkability in American cities. Cities and suburbs “need to assess current walkability conditions for every district of the city, and then develop policies and plans for the total pedestrian environment” (254). Standards and regulations need to be revised in order to promote walkability (255). More research into walking behaviour in urban environments is necessary (255). Urban designers and traffic planners need to work together, and the public needs to be involved “through educational activities and participation in the planning process” (255). Finally, “a new generation of transportation and urban planners is needed who view pedestrian access as a necessary and integral part of the whole transportation environment” (255). It’s a tall order, but by focusing on the walkable city, we can “transform the way we live in fundamental ways, benefiting human health, social relations, and the natural environment” (255).

I find Southworth’s discussion of path context particularly important to my research. Is it possible that places where participatory or convivial walking events are organized tend to have more inviting path contexts than the city where I live? Could living in a city with an inviting path context help to encourage a culture of walking—a culture in which going for a walk is not considered eccentric or a sign of poverty because one isn’t in a motor vehicle? That might be a useful term in trying to get at what I think is lacking where I live—a quality that might be present in other places where people are willing to participate in group walking experiences curated by walking artists. It certainly speaks to my experience after spending years walking in Regina: it’s often an experience I put up with rather than enjoy.

Work Cited

Southworth, Michael. “Designing the Walkable City.” Journal of Urban Planning and Development, vol. 131, no. 4, 2005, pp. 246-57. DOI: 10.0161/(ASCE)0733-9488(2005)131:4(246).

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