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Walkable city

Cities are the manifestation of human complexities. The urban complicated lifestyle engenders many problems that people are continuously trying to address. Key among which are the impact we are having on the environment, stress, anxiety, and pollution and its impact on our health and wellbeing. I think there are some small changes to our lifestyle that we can implement to address some of aspects of these pressing issues, for example, the promotion of walking.

Let’s try to think about the benefit of encouraging active lifestyle, walking more specifically:

  1. It is an environmentally friendly way to commute short distances and economically efficient as it is free and does not require investing in any type of gear, bikes…etc.
  2. It helps with personal physical and mental health.
  3. It helps develop better personal understanding of the community and the sense of belonging.
  4. It helps create safer streets with more human presence, and the list goes on.

So, after a few lockdowns, where we were working from home with hardly any commute either for work or leisure, I feel that it’s the right time to be more active and find ways to promote walking in our cities. We as urban designers should facilitate the promotion of a healthier lifestyle in our cities and create a cleaner environment to live within.

Jeff Speck in his “Walkable City” highlighted the importance of the walkability of a city and the broad range of benefits. The book states: “How can we keep our children from leaving? The obvious answer is that cities need to provide the sort of environment that these people want. Surveys – as if we needed them – show how creative-class citizens, especially millennials vastly favor communities with street life, the pedestrian culture that can only come from walkability.”

Relatively recent research by the Nuffield Trust and Health Foundation showed that almost 64% of the UK population are overweight or obese, and nearly 40% of the kids are overweight or obese as the research conducted by. As we can see in figure 1 and figure 2 below that the increase in the recent years is at least 10% in the obesity level.

fig1: https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/resource/obesity#background

fig2: https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/resource/obesity#background

I believe that improving walkability will make the community healthier and the cities more alive. This leads us to the main question, what makes our cities more walkable? The answer is far from simple, however, as I said earlier, we do not need to look into paradigm shifting solutions, there are small adjustments and changes, easy to implement, that collectively would lead to the aimed eventual improvement. For instance, why do not we make some parts of public squares and maybe some pedestrian paths more attractive for kids and their parents to walk. This can be achieved at a small cost with the use of some colourful paints on the grounds to create some fun activities for all members of the family to enjoy. This also can be used to create educational activities for children to learn while they are having a fun walk with their family, after all learning through playing is an established method of education in the early years of school.

In figure 3,4, and 5, we can see some examples of simple street drawings in the public space.

fig3: https://dailyhive.com/edmonton/snakes-and-ladders-game-edmonton-parkview

fig4:https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/533043305900797518/

fig5: https://www.deepfun.com/adventures-hopscotch/

Improving walkability would also help increase social interaction on the streets and make them vibrant, and full of life.

These small suggestions could certainly help implement an aspect of the 8-80 cities concept, making some public spaces more fun for kids to use while they are adopting a healthier lifestyle indeed helps with the 8 side of the concept.  So, let’s try with little steps to make a kids’ city of fun.

One response to “Walkable city”

  1. In the paper “Design of an Urban Space”, Jan Gehl criticizes the modernists such as Le Corbusier for designing cities that do not have any connection between the streets and human life. This is a very similar example to the kind of the activities that engage in healthy lifestyle by proposing the 15-20min walk from the residences to all public, commercial and communal spaces around homes. He then elaborates three essential factors that contribute to quality public spaces that covers the fundamental activities, additional and the social activities that amplifies and initiates the idea. These fundamental activities are routinely carried out on a daily basis with additional activities being the ones that take place only in favourable conditions and are interdependent on the quality of the space.
    Social activities such as large communal gatherings take place in comprehensive designed spaces and depend exclusively on the context. The life between these buildings are highlighted based on the interconnection amongst the urban blocks. The preliminary idea is to create pro-active spaces that compliments these healthy lifestyles and encourages people to step out more often. Enhancing the spatial quality by humanizing the street life through various design elements. Frequent meetings with these contacts help in increasing the bond with neighbours and friends. Children are more likely to maintain relationships and stay in contact rather than adults. We can learn the information about the locality and other world events by means of contact. People are more likely to use the public outdoor spaces with more activity and prefer to have visual access towards the streets. In conclusion, the city life can be improved by key alteration in outdoor spaces.

    Additionally, Jane Jacob’s paper in the city reader also extensively talks about the five fundamental factors that contribute to a good urban enclosure. One of the finest examples being the ‘node’ that acts as a focal point or interjection of paths converging from different paths of the city. Kevin finds that the ‘nodes’ are the breakout points of transportation in Boston, whereas in Los Angeles and Jersey City they can also be a point of interaction.
    The last fundamental factor being the landmarks are easily identifiable objects, which serve as an external reference point where one does not enter. Consequently, he also formulates the city form and what it means to the people. He then, puts together the criterion on imageability that can help a planner to make the city memorable and make its image clear to the people living in the city, that not only activates the street life, but also makes it easier to practise a healthier lifestyle that encourages walking from given point A to point B.

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  1. In the paper “Design of an Urban Space”, Jan Gehl criticizes the modernists such as Le Corbusier for designing cities that do not have any connection between the streets and human life. This is a very similar example to the kind of the activities that engage in healthy lifestyle by proposing the 15-20min walk from the residences to all public, commercial and communal spaces around homes. He then elaborates three essential factors that contribute to quality public spaces that covers the fundamental activities, additional and the social activities that amplifies and initiates the idea. These fundamental activities are routinely carried out on a daily basis with additional activities being the ones that take place only in favourable conditions and are interdependent on the quality of the space.
    Social activities such as large communal gatherings take place in comprehensive designed spaces and depend exclusively on the context. The life between these buildings are highlighted based on the interconnection amongst the urban blocks. The preliminary idea is to create pro-active spaces that compliments these healthy lifestyles and encourages people to step out more often. Enhancing the spatial quality by humanizing the street life through various design elements. Frequent meetings with these contacts help in increasing the bond with neighbours and friends. Children are more likely to maintain relationships and stay in contact rather than adults. We can learn the information about the locality and other world events by means of contact. People are more likely to use the public outdoor spaces with more activity and prefer to have visual access towards the streets. In conclusion, the city life can be improved by key alteration in outdoor spaces.

    Additionally, Jane Jacob’s paper in the city reader also extensively talks about the five fundamental factors that contribute to a good urban enclosure. One of the finest examples being the ‘node’ that acts as a focal point or interjection of paths converging from different paths of the city. Kevin finds that the ‘nodes’ are the breakout points of transportation in Boston, whereas in Los Angeles and Jersey City they can also be a point of interaction.
    The last fundamental factor being the landmarks are easily identifiable objects, which serve as an external reference point where one does not enter. Consequently, he also formulates the city form and what it means to the people. He then, puts together the criterion on imageability that can help a planner to make the city memorable and make its image clear to the people living in the city, that not only activates the street life, but also makes it easier to practise a healthier lifestyle that encourages walking from given point A to point B.

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School of Architecture
Planning and Landscape
Newcastle upon Tyne
Tyne and Wear, NE1 7RU

Telephone: 0191 208 6509

Email: nicola.rutherford@ncl.ac.uk