Cities: Walkable Neighborhoods Solve Many Public Health Concerns

Photo Credit to Me. Venice, Italy

“If you plan cities for cars and traffic, you get cars and traffic. If you plan for people and places, you get people and places.”

-Fred Kent, Project for Public Spaces.

I have been thinking lately, how can we convince people and/or politicians who believe that driving a private vehicles are the best way to travel around a city and change their minds so that they understand that driving actually makes our city less accessible and less equitable for everyone. How can we change hearts and minds so that we are less dependent on private vehicles and make our city better by making it more walkable. First, it is clear that people are uncomfortable with the factual truth that cars are not safe and kill 40,000 people in the United States each year. In many instances, people have accepted these preventable deaths as part of the risk of driving a car, which is disappointing. So I want to focus on the benefits of having a less car-centric city to change hearts and minds of people in power who can help us change our city for the better.

So let’s talk about the downside to cars first. Cars have for the last century colonized the space of everyday human life. You can see the remnants of traffic dominated planning in cities all over the world, especially here in San Francisco. Neighborhoods with no sidewalks, public spaces over run with parked vehicles and urban highways segregating neighborhoods are deteriorating our cities. Cars cause traffic and congestion and most cars are currently dependent on non-renewable fossil fuels and are a major contributor to air and noise pollution. Speeding cars are the main cause of premature deaths and injuries in road collisions and costs cities millions of dollars each year. The toll on human beings is unquestionable. People are not moving their bodies enough when they are solely dependant on the use of a car to travel around cities. The World Health Organization estimates that inactivity is the fourth highest risk factor globally, causing an estimated 3.5 million deaths annually.

So why do we keep allowing cars to proliferate in our cities, when we know how much harm and frankly unhappiness it creates for the people that live in our city?

There are lots of answers to that question, but in this article I want to focus on how more walkable cities can improve communities, neighborhoods, public spaces and our streets. A more walkable city could solve many public health issues, as well as make us a happier and a more connected community, in a time where we need to be more closely tied to each other’s humanity more now than ever.

In a 2019 ARUP research report called *Cities Alive*, a multinational engineering firm, laid out some of the benefits for walkable places. They had four categories: Social, economic, environmental and political. Here is what the research found:

1. A walkable neighborhood promotes active living, for longer and better lives

Most people are aware that a more active lifestyle can improve your physical and mental health, it’s why we still have indoor gyms. But what if it were even easier to live an active and healthier lifestyle by just building our lives around it. For instance, if families lived within walking distance of school and work, more school aged children would walk to school. This promotes independence and better mental and physical health before kids even begin their school day. Children walking to school has declined from about 50% of school aged kids walking to school to less than 15% today in part because of our built environment. Studies have shown that walking regularly cuts early mortality risk by 22%.

Walking burns 4 calories per minute and regular walks reduce the risk of disease such as Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and colon cancer. A study of California cities showed that walkable street networks correlate with lower obesity, diabetes, asthma, and heart disease. Investing in walkable places can drastically improve a fit lifestyle, which increases resilience to health risks and reduces the number of people affected by chronic disease.

2. Increases happiness and mental health

“Great public space is like magic, it’s almost happiness itself” — Enrique Penalosa, former mayor of Bogata, Columbia from 2016–2019. Walking raises endorphin levels, lowers stress-related cortisol, and helps people sleep better. The longer humans have to drive to and from work, the less happy we are. In Happy City by Charles Montgomery, a Swedish study he cites found that a person with a one-hour commute has to earn 40% more to be as happy as someone who walks to work. As Montgomery later writes, “Any honest assessment of travel time has to include the hours you spend working to pay for your vehicle,” including the costs that are “hidden in loan financing, parking fees, repairs, tolls, accessories, maintenance, and depreciation.”

The additional mental health for walking also is about community and connection with people. When you drive in your car, you are constantly separated by metal from the world around you, while walking allows opportunities for connection with the people and places in our city. People generally will feel happier and more connected to a place with the simple act of walking around our urban landscape.

3. Walkable streets builds safer streets

Putting walking first helps slow down traffic speeds without necessarily lowering its flow, dramatically reducing the risk of road accidents. “By reducing the need for car travel, setting safe speeds, and moving people through safely designed infrastructure and mass transport, WRI works to prevent traffic crashes, encourage healthy lifestyles and reduce air pollution. The results save lives and help to advance a greener, healthier future.”

4. Reduces crime

Redesigning the urban environment to encourage walkability brings people in the streets and increases activities in public space, dramatically improving the perception of safety and individual confidence. In Rotterdam, Holland, community members identified traffic speed and street appearance as crime issues. Working with police to improve the public realm dramatically cut crime over a period of two years: drug crime dropped by 30 percent, burglary by 22 percent, and vandalism by 31 percent.

5. Enhances a sense of place and community identity

Thinking about our streets as places for people and not as a functional link for cars can shape the characteristics of a place that make it unique. If it is perceived as unique it can draw other people or repeat visits to this extraordinary place. Designated Slow Streets in San Francisco have boosted neighborhoods that historically were not destinations to be visited more because it is more inviting to people walking and is more accessible by biking and public transportation. It also creates a quieter environment for those that live along these corridors.

6. Walkable cities are more accessible and encourages inclusiveness

Walkability is a driver for equity and creativity. Walkability fosters equitable cities by providing equal access to opportunities, promoting public health, and strengthening community bonds. It achieves this by making it easier for residents, regardless of income or ability, to reach essential services, enjoy a healthier lifestyle, and connect with their neighbors. A pedestrian-friendly environment tends to support art and culture in the public realm. Streets designed with people in mind allows for streets to be accessible to the most vulnerable users of our streets and makes them accessible to all. Examples of the way that San Francisco is activating streets for people to use as a gathering place for community and culture is done through street festivals, night markets in Chinatown, town squares in the Bayview or street food markets in the Sunset.

San Francisco has had a long history of activating streets for people, but have we gone far enough?

My answer to that is no we can do more.

We need to activate our streets for people to walk, gather, bike and take public transportation to gain access to culture, jobs, education and economic stability. Streets being designed for people and not cars will see an improvement to access to all of these necessities and it will create equitable access to a thriving and healthy life.

Building people scaled streets paves the way forward to building housing and transportation in dense people focused neighborhoods. Well-designed cities and pedestrian streets can influence how people interact with their environment and with each other. By creating inviting and safe spaces, these initiatives can foster stronger social connections and a greater sense of community.

Advocating for these improvements on our streets has been a part of our city’s ethos for the last 50+ years, but I believe now our advocacy work must be about bringing people along and less about “us v. them.” Advocates have for too long made people outside of the street safety work feel alienated by “othering” the opposition and who could blame us, it is how we have been made to feel for decades. What I have discovered in doing this work is that more people want quieter neighborhoods with safer access to services without the need to use a private vehicle. Parents want to be able to let their children walk to a friend’s house or to school safely. People do not want people speeding in their cars in front of their house, these same people want quieter, greener streets and neighborhoods. So why when there is a project that is being supported by safe street advocates to make the neighborhood better, the opposition comes out and fights against it under the guise of “we don’t want things to change” or “you are trying to take my freedom (i.e. cars) away”? I believe that is because people are afraid of change. Change is hard, but I think that if we can have a conversation to find common ground that will make our neighborhoods better and we can build something together by finding common ground. This will also provide political cover for those in power to make changes that make our city better.

We need to approach communities with kindness and empathy, doing this does not mean that we will not get anything, but it means we get to build relationships and find the people with common goals to make our community safer and more livable. This definitely takes longer, but the way the advocates have done it has reached its limit and it is time to change hearts and minds to make our city better. We need to have conversations in community and to make sure people are heard, even if it is hard to listen and maybe we view it as selfish, but we need to see the humanity in others to further the movement of better cities with less cars. Remember change is hard, but we need to bring others with us rather than alienating them.

What if we identified organizations that are trying to reduce childhood obesity or organizations that are promoting better health outcomes for communities that have historically had poor health outcomes. What if a more walkable city would benefit these groups that we have historically not connected with to share solutions to improve their daily lives with better mental and physical health. What if we showed up in spaces where seniors and people with disabilities could see how daily walks to the post office, pharmacy, coffee shops or to see neighbors or community events could be done just by walking a few blocks with others. What if we could advocate by demonstrating that safety, independence, better mental and physical health is just a matter of designing our neighborhoods and streets prioritizing people in spaces that were otherwise used to prioritize the private vehicle.

The greatest accomplishment during my career was the transformation of John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park to JFK Promenade. It was a fight that took over 50 years, but we eventually got there and nothing about the opposition said would negatively impact our community happened and the park has become more accessible to more people in spite of the opposition’s arguments that it was closed off to seniors and people with disabilities. Advocates were able to do this because we had conversations with key stakeholders to address their concerns around accessibility. We had conversations with people that saw the benefits to our community to move our bodies and have access to green space outweighed the benefits of driving a car on the road or having more parking spaces. We had conversations and we made connections with people to show them how amazing our park could be.

Building a larger and more diverse community is where we need to start to change hearts and minds. To demonstrate that walkable cities are more equitable cities and how they connect us with each other. Yesterday is really when we needed to start, but today we can begin to build alliances that show the politicians that more livable experiences can be improved if we start to focus on how to make our cities more people oriented and address the needs that would make their day to day lives better.

Building safe communities should start today.