Why It Matters Walkability
Summary
We have measured how friendly your area is to pedestrians.
Definition
Walkability is dependent on a number of factors such as the quantum of roads in your area, how busy they are, how big the pavements are, how built-up your area is, road connectivity, terrain, and how safe it is to walk through. Consequentially, we have created a composite indicator to measure how friendly the various neighbourhoods of London are to walking.
| Dataset | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Harmonised Walkability Score | This score tells you how far above or below the London-wide mean the walkability level of your neighbourhood is. A score of 50 represents the mean, while a number closer to 100 represents a a more walkable neighbourhood, whereas scores closer to o represents a relatively less walkable neighbourhood. |
Why the metric matters from a commercial inhabitant’s perspective
The more foot friendly (i.e. walkable) an area is, the more likely the area is to have a vibrant outdoor culture within it. Expect restaurants with outdoor seating, street markets, performances and community events along highly walkable streets. This also makes these areas ideal for active shopfronts, as, in addition to such areas being more likely to experience high passing footfall, the extant footfall is, by virtue of it being less rapid in speed as compared to other modes of travel, more likely to be able to take time to recognise retail advertisements and enticements. Resultantly, walkable areas are associated with having higher levels of impact for advertisers.
The downside however, is that property prices are likely to be higher in these areas, so getting a prime business spot will come with its costs. Moreover, walkable neighbourhoods are often relatively affluent, and studies show that this is only set to increase. Ninety percent (90%) of the largest walkable centres in the United States saw economic growth double between 2010 and 2015, making these centres a prime area for commerce that is unlikely to become over saturated any time soon.
Walkable areas also have significantly higher levels of social cohesion, due to residents experiencing lower relative transportation costs and higher levels of happiness as associated with walking and better physical health outcomes.
Why the metric matters from a residential inhabitant’s perspective
Highly walkable areas help create an urban environment where people can interact more. Resultantly, people who live in more walkable areas often have a stronger associative bond with their local area, and an increased sense of duty in their community, based on higher levels of volunteerism.
There is also good evidence to suggest that levels of crime are significantly lower in walkable neighbours, as these areas benefit from having more “eyes on the street” which acts in a similar manner to having a police presence. In addition, recent medical research has shown that as people in more walkable areas get more exercise, they have improved health outcomes, with lower rates of heart disease and diabetes as well as lower occurrences of mental health problems.
London’s streets are becoming increasingly pedestrianised, with Carnaby Street one of the first to be made car-free in 1973 (Photograph: Ingriddyches, Wikimedia Commons)
Commentary
The term walkability and the variables that constitute its measurement are often defined differently to serve different masters. Most current definitions of walkability all point to the conduciveness of the built environment to walking. That being said, they can be vague in their construction of who the pedestrian or walker is and their needs.
Many researchers have distinguished between the kinds of physical activity that they are considering in their walkability research: walking for transport or walking for leisure and/or recreation. These different needs for walking are represented in measurements by way of variable weights. For instance, connectivity between work and home would be weighted higher in consideration of transport purposes, whereas, proximity to parks and trails would be weighted higher for leisure or recreational purposes. It is in these distinctions that we see that definitions of walkability are indeed important and reflect the selection and weighting of variables that measure walkability.
One of the best walkability led built environment interventions in London was the transformation of Woolwich centre. Completed in 2013, the regeneration of Woolwich town centre saw the construction of a new mixed use, administrative, cultural, residential and retail offering. The placing of the main supermarket in the heart of the neighbourhood resulted in more locals convening in the area, as it was the first supermarket in the centre for 30 years! The central pedestrian-only zone is now highly valued by the ethnically-diverse local community, where people meet and play in between using the surrounding amenities, resulting in a green area that is constantly abuzz.
Trivia
While it is highly contested which city is the most walkable in the world, New York, Vancouver and Sydney are the most popular candidates for the award in the eyes of urbanists. Many other cities are following suit, with the mayor of Bogotá in Colombia, stating “God made us walking animals - pedestrians … As a fish needs to swim, a bird to fly, a deer to run, we need to walk; not in order to survive, but to be happy.”
History
Walkability Designing walkable cities is highly complex, and has been ongoing since the turn of the twentieth century, when the discipline of urban planning came into existence. Since then, urbanists have been designing intricate plans for cities around the globe to varying levels of success. For example, Le Corbusier’s Voisin Plan for Paris, created in 1925, sought to create a vertical city with residents and offices all contained within skyscrapers.
We now know that this plan would not have worked well in terms of walkability, as isolating shops and offices to floors in a building would remove the opportunity for a pedestrian to experience them as they travelled through the city. The debate on walkability was further developed in 1961 by Jane Jacobs, who demanded urbanists to pay special attention to how cities could be powerful social hubs where people want to get together through the intelligent design of space. Since 2012, many urbanists have begun to take walkability into serious consideration, and the design of walkable cities is now seen to be a pressing issue.