There's much to learn from a city's treatment of pedestrians
Contents, this page |
|
|
When you start to look at how other places see walking as an important solution for problems in city and individual health, it becomes one interesting story after another. The material on this page is about larger southern places, where walkers are often pedestrians on sidewalks or in parks, but there are things to be learned from reading what these others are doing.
Of course, we must temper other place's interesting solutions with being a small spread out town with winter, snow, and a short lounging about outside drinking latés season! And we must temper our dreams with:
"The TAC manual emphasizes that judgment and experience of the designer are important and avoids using the term "standards" to specify required features of a design. In general, the manual refers to the "design domain," a range of acceptable geometric configurations and dimensions that the designer should choose from. Still, as a previous version of the manual puts it, the manual represents "customary practice that is generally recognized by the profession to be sound," and virtually no innovative street designs are discussed in any version. Given this, the manual can be seen as conservative in its approach" Making Toronto streets (A good backgrounder to some aspects of Canadian streets)
Canada
- Walk Richmond is an initiative aimed at building a legacy of healthy lifestyles in Richmond by engaging people in lifelong walking; Richmond’s Walking Guide Book 21 easy walks around Richmond
- Winter city guidelines and snow policies Fort St. John
- Alberta Centre for active Living Lots of walkable community links
- Alberta Government's Healthy Places: How walkable communities are created link needs updating
- Walking in Edmonton: I don't know where to start, they have multiple neighbourhood walking maps; a publication to promote walking — Walkable Edmonton toolkit; a How walkable is your community? checklist. They have a Edmonton Federation of Community Leagues which supports Edmonton's 155 community leagues (community associations?)
- Victoria Transportation Policy Institute and its Planetizen Blog; Noxan associates.
- Canada walks
Our Mission: to change the current social paradigm so that walkable communities are the cultural and social norm in Canada. A lot of interesting material such as Organizing a pedestrian advocacy group.
They published Canada Walks Master Class 2009 Case study City of Whitehorse. An interesting read that the City should revisit! - British Columbia Recreation and Parks Association's Walking Program and Walking program resource guide
- Walk BC encourages individual and group walking to increase overall health in communities through a range of programs that promote walking. This site helps communities and individuals increase awareness of the importance of a physically active lifestyle, and support and promote walking as a key factor in increasing overall health and well-being. It has a neat trail finder, and major segments such as: workplace walking, managing events, promoting & engaging and virtual exchange (idea sharing).
City of Toronto
Pedestrian Environment... a number of programs that affect the pedestrian environment
Walking... Toronto Walking Strategy was adopted by Toronto City Council in 2009. Its goal is to make Toronto a great walking city. Based on months of discussion with the public, external organizations, and relevant City divisions and agencies, the Toronto Walking Strategy includes visionary policy, infrastructure and programming to create a rich culture of walking in Toronto.
In Toronto, advocacy organizations have been formed by transit users. They also exist for cyclists. There is even an organization that promotes electric vehicles. Unfortunately, for several years there were no groups advocating exclusively on behalf of pedestrians.
Other places
- Project for Public Spaces releases new report, "The case for healthy places: Improving health through placemaking"
- Victoria Walks has great tips, information and resources to inspire more people to walk everyday!
- International Charter for walking Creating healthy, efficient and sustainable communities where people choose to walk. "Built on extensive discussions with experts throughout the world this Charter shows how to create a culture where people choose to walk. It identifies the needs of people on foot and provides a common framework to help authorities refocus their existing policies, activities and relationships to create a culture where people choose to walk."
- 5 Reasons a walkable neighborhood is valuable
- What makes a successful place? Replace the word 'place' by 'trail' as you read this.
- The important difference between a public space and a 'common' "This means we must stop sprawling out and make better use of our existing developed places, especially by reinvesting in older city neighborhoods and taking advantage of opportunities to improve and complete sprawling, isolated newer suburbs with more walkable places."
- Is being able to walk around your city a right?
- WalkBoston
- From inspiration to action: Implementing projects to support active living
- Active living by design
- Complete Streets Chicago
- Walkability of neighbourhoods: a critical analysis of zoning codes Rekha Kumar's masters theses, U. of Cincinnati
- Operational definitions of walkable neighborhood: Theoretical and empirical insights
- Safety benefits of raised medians and Pedestrian refuge areas, U.S. Federal Highway Admin
- How far will we walk to go somewhere? It depends.
- Pedestrians and park planning: how far will people walk? '"Perhaps the crux of the issue is: do people consider walking to the park a chore, or is the walk part of the recreational experience itself?"
- People walk to get to places they want to go when places are nearby.
- Neighbourhood walkability checklist How walkable is your community? Letting the city know how you perceive our city walkability is a big step. This document should be redesigned to apply to Whitehorse.
- Walk score ranks walkability (here's how) of cities in US and Canada. Whitehorse get a 92, but when you put in our address in Hillcrest, it drops to 27. Lots to play around with here. What it does show is that Whitehorse data is inaccurate!
- City of Minneapolis has a new bike/ped coordinator and a Pedestrian Advisory Committee, but there is not organized advocacy for walking in Minnesota. And City of Minneapolis pedestrian master plan
- Washington State's feet first website says "WHAT IF? ...spending money on transportation meant putting people first?" "Join our people powered movement and bring equal footing to the voice of all people who go by foot. Help us strengthen the voice for people walking throughout Washington by becoming a Feet First member, business member, sponsor, or volunteer. Your commitment demonstrates the importance of walking in all aspects of our lives." They have an inspiring Guide to walking meetings as well as a Community map making handbook.
America Walks
- ...making America a great place to walk is a national resource which fosters walkable communities by engaging, educating, and connecting walking advocates.
- Final report of National walking survey 2011
- Population shifts and implications for walking in the United States, finds that major population shifts in the United States point to changes in American attitudes and behaviors regarding walking. These shifts are likely to result in a substantial increase in both recreational and utilitarian walking. Three demographic changes, in particular, are likely to promote this "walking revolution:" (1) the aging of the baby boomers, (2) the different transportation priorities of young people, and (3) the decline of the suburbs.
Environmental psychology
This free course is available on iTunes U. The field of environmental psychology examines people's interactions with their everyday socio-physical surroundings from a broad interdisciplinary perspective encompassing psychology, sociology, urban planning, landscape architecture, public policy and public health. A central concern of scholars and practitioners in environmental psychology is the translation of scientific research findings into guidelines for designing vibrant places that foster high levels of psychological and physical well-being by providing ample opportunities for social engagement and physically active lifestyles.
Among the topics covered are strategies for developing evidence-based design guidelines to enhance the walkability of urban and suburban neighborhoods, increase physical activity levels among community members, and reduce obesity in children, adolescents, and adults.
other
- The invention of jaywalking
- Edward Rutherford and walking, a pedestrian pursuit (Skip til about 1:35) Lots of good information on walkable cities, on the impact on health, on providing opportunities to linger, to meet, to permit serendipity.
- Biophilia: greening our cities (literally!)
- The tricks designers use to make roads safer
Books, presentations, articles
- The ways of walking:
Strolling, Sauntering, Meandering, Hiking, Wandering, Walks, Hikes, Trekking, Tramping
- Quotations, Poems, Quips, Wisdom, Sayings, Lore - Walking, Henry David Thoreau
- The pedestrian, Ray Bradbury
- What characterizes the discussion on cities these days is not a wrongheadedness or a lack of awareness about what needs to be done, but rather a complete disconnect between that awareness and the actions of those responsible for the physical form of our communities. - Walkable City, by Jeff Speck, referenced in The Pedestrian Is a fragile species
Slate
"Despite these upsides, in an America enraptured by the cultural prosthesis that is the automobile, walking has become a lost mode, perceived as not a legitimate way to travel but a necessary adjunct to one's car journey, a hobby, or something that people without cars — those pitiable "vulnerable road users," as they are called with charitable condescension — do. To decry these facts — to examine, as I will in this series, how Americans might start walking more again — may seem like a hopelessly retrograde, romantic exercise: nostalgia for Thoreau's woodland ambles. But the need is urgent. The decline of walking has become a full-blown public health nightmare."
- The crisis in American walking How we got off the pedestrian path
- Sidewalk science The peculiar habits of the pedestrian, explained
- What's your walk score? The company that puts a number on walkability
- Learning to walk How America can start walking again
The Atlantic Cities
...explores the most innovative ideas and pressing issues facing today's global cities and neighborhoods. By bringing together news, analysis, data, and trends, the site gives a lot of ideas about how to solve problems in urban design.
- We need to rethink our definition of a 'sustainable city'
- How sprawl makes fighting childhood obesity so much harder
- The case for walkability as an economic development tool
- Could parking lot walkways point the way to walkable redevelopment?
- An alarmingly strong link between lack of walkability and diabetes
- Concrete ideas for promoting walkability
- Can we quantify a good walk?
- Walkable by accident
- The right way to engage residents in a neighborhood redesign
- How to make a city healthy
- The science of how we walk
- A data-driven case for walkability
- Why you should say 'Hello' to strangers on the street
- What neighborhoods need to succeed at walkability
- Parks weren't always for everybody
- Are our transit maps tricking us?
- How happy are you with your city? Somerville finds out
- Jane Jacobs and the power of women planners
- After a weight loss challenge, Oklahoma City seeks walkability
- How much more would you pay to live near a park?
- How we're failing our parks
- Urbanizing the suburban street
- What citizens add to planning
- Somehow we're walking more and walking less at the same time
- What pictures can teach us about walkability
- 'Taking back the town from the automobile'
- Why alleys deserve more attention
- Raleigh's guerrilla wayfinding signs deemed illegal
- A picture worth 1,000 arguments for more walkable streets
- How urban parks enhance your brain, part 2
- Why Americans and Europeans give directions differently
- A case sturdy in a senior-friendly city
- The grave health risks of unwalkable communities
- The true costs of unwalkable streets
- If you want walkable development, you must show that it pays I learned about the "Irvine Minnesota Inventory, a comprehensive index defining and measuring 160 factors that contribute to the pedestrian experience: metrics like accessibility, pleasurability, perceived safety from traffic, and perceived safety from crime. " The article also mentioned, A neighborhood credit rating & diagnostic tool, State of Place™ informs economic development, guides investment, aids place branding and enhances communities.
Original green: common-sense, plain-spoken sustainability
- Walk appeal immeasurables
- Walk appeal
- Walk appeal impact
- Sprawl recovery — a 12-step program
- Parks vs. recreation centers
- Parks and sustainable places
- Retirement vs. the pursuit of meaning
- Walkable paradise
I often challenge town founders with something I call the Tourist Test, which is this: "Is the place you are building good enough that people will want to spend their vacations there?". I think that we should build our community infrastructure for ourselves first. Then if it's good enough, tourists will use it. Nonetheless the question is interesting. So many people come here with a week or two and want to see Alaska, or the Dempster, Dawson, go canoeing,... but how many people come to Whitehorse purely as a vacation destination? As we develop more of a walking culture, this will spin off into buzz, that it's a great place to come and spend time just for walking.
