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).