Walkability and the amount of walking: How does improved
walkability affect the amount of walking? What are the influencing factors and how can data help us understand these
issues?
Case studies often show that better walkability leads to more walking. Many cities do a lot to improve infrastructure schemes, communicate the benefits of walking and adopt walking policies. When we look at the general data on walking, however, we see a decline in many cities and countries, occasionally a slight increase or a stable situation.
Why is this so? What are the reasons why that walking stages, trips, times or distances do not increase overall as would be expected given the improvements in the walking environment? What are the factors influencing walkability and the amount of walking? How can we collect data and create indicators that reflect the true developments in the walking world?
Building on the work completed by Walk21 for the International Walking Data Standard and past pre-conference workshops on Measuring Walking, we discussed how to better understand these apparent conflicts and evaluate in more depth the trends in walking data.
