Walkable communities are more than pedestrian-friendly spaces. They are human-centred, mixed-use neighbourhoods that accommodate enough people to support a diversity of businesses and public transport.  Featuring a flourishing central area such as an easily accessible main street with pleasant public spaces, walkable communities house people of mixed incomes and provide pedestrians with easy access to shops and public buildings, to schools and places of work.

Offering more than just proximity to amenities, walkable communities are described by the United States-based Walking Communities organisation as being “thriving, livable, sustainable places that give their residents safe transportation choices and improved quality of life”. With well-connected streets designed for pedestrians and cyclists as well as efficient transport options, such communities are lively and enjoyable to live in.

Increasingly time-consuming commutes by car along congested routes coupled with typically characterless suburban sprawl are impacting on where people choose to live.  Reflecting a movement back to urban centres, a preference for living in walkable, mixed-use neighbourhoods is evident in a recent Community Preference Survey commissioned by the National Association of Realtors in the United States. In the February 2011 study, 77 per cent of respondents said that when buying a home they look for areas with pavements and other pedestrian-friendly features, with 50 per cent of respondents saying they would prefer to see improvements to public transport rather than initiatives to build new roads. If it meant a reduction in commuting time to 20 minutes or less, 59 per cent said they would rather have a smaller home.

This trend is also reported in an April 2010 Harvard Business Review article titled ‘Back to the City’, noting that both young workers and retiring Baby Boomers “are actively seeking to live in densely packed, mixed-use communities that don’t require cars”.

Such preferences are reflected in city planning that is informed by the New Urbanism movement. According to newurbanism.org, New Urbanism “promotes the creation and restoration of diverse, walkable, compact, vibrant, mixed-use communities”. New Urbanism also promotes effective public transport and resource-efficient design and, as the Congress of the New Urbanism in the United States emphasises in its charter, “Urban places should be framed by architecture and landscape design that celebrate local history, climate, ecology, and building practice”.

[pullquote]There are numerous civil society and local initiatives in Australia and around the world that promote walkability.[/pullquote]

New Urbanism is sometimes equated with Smart Growth that also promotes mixed-use, walkable communities. The coalition group Smart Growth America’s aims include the promotion of farmland and open space protection, neighborhood revitalisation, affordable housing, and the creation of livable communities. Advocates claim that planning and developing compact urban communities curtails urban sprawl, reduces dependency on cars, leads to improved air quality, conserves energy resources and improves public health as people are able to walk or cycle as part of daily life. It is also argued that human-centred – as opposed to car-centred – walkable streets and public spaces enhance social interaction.

There are numerous civil society and local initiatives in Australia and around the world that promote walkability. Bushwalking Australia’s 2009 discussion paper “Towards a Walkable Australia” focuses on both urban and rural areas, and contends that walkable communities make sense economically, environmentally and socially. For example, in compact communities, the costs of infrastructure are reduced and less land is built on, and existing neighbourhoods can provide a “greater depth of natural and cultural experience”.

There are various citizen groups, such as public transport user’s associations, that advocate for improved access to amenities and take into account the needs of pedestrians. There are also local campaigns that target specific walkability issues, such as the East Ivanhoe Walking Action Group successfully lobbying for a pedestrian crossing at a major roundabout intersection in Melbourne that was installed at the end of 2010

In Australia, “nearly every state has integrated some New Urbanism philosophy into its statutory frameworks”, comments urban design researcher Jan Scheurer in his PhD thesis on the future of cities. As an example, he mentions guidelines for Perth in 1997 that “focused on integration of residential and other uses, on pedestrian-friendly urban spaces and accessibility, and on the facilitation of a diversity of building typologies and housing forms”.

The influence of New Urbanism is evident in ongoing city planning. Currently, the Future Melbourne Wiki lists goals for the “connected city” that include effective and integrated public transport, a “cycling city” and a “walking city”.

Planning for walkable communities inevitably involves engaging with public transport issues and the use of cars. An important point of dissonance that Scheurer remarks on in his dissertation is that while there might be “relative consensus on better neighbourhoods” there is no consensus on transport polices and provision for cars.

Although walkable communities should lead to a reduction in car use, in practice in Australia provisions for cars and parking has not changed that much. Scheurer notes that New Urbanist theorists in North America and Australia “envision dramatically improved conditions for walking and cycling and the concentration of uses around public transit”. But theorists “nevertheless accept the dominance of automobility in the travel market, the high level of car ownership and the need to cater for it in residential development, and the notion that mixed uses will malfunction unless providing for convenient vehicle access.”

In the context of rapidly increasing urbanisation in a car-oriented Australia, paving the way to walkable communities requires some hard thinking around car use and what Scheurer calls “the automobile’s inherent space-invading capacities”.

In a piece titled “Deep Walkability” posted on the WorldChanging website, Alex Steffen says that it is a dangerous illusion to think that “we can ‘balance’ cars with sidewalk life”. If we embrace “deep walkability” where walking is not an optional extra, it becomes a “top priority driving urban design”. Steffen argues: “Assert the primacy of people enjoying the act of walking, and density begins to become community, transit begins to become an essential amenity rather than a safety net, and life begins to orient around experiences and access rather than accumulation and convenience.”

Put like that, walking the talk has never been more radical.

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About the author

Carol Brammage
Carol Brammage is a freelance writer based in South Africa. She has worked as an academic librarian at a university in South Africa and as a sub-editor on a daily newspaper. She holds a Master’s degree in English literature. Her interests include reading, writing, music, gardening and nature watching. She designs and makes bags and beanies inspired by African textiles and beadwork. She aspires to plain living and when possible she and her husband take off on camping trips into the sobering solitude of the bush.