Why do people walk?
My first paper is in press — in Travel Behaviour and Society!
Why do people walk? Role of the built environment and state of development of a social model of walkability
Access it here. It is part of my PhD work, and done with my amazing supervision team — Professor Erica Hinckson and Associate Professor Melody Smith.
Why study walking?
I can get that it seems weird that we study walking, something we’ve been doing consistently for the last 200,000-odd years — and I agree, it should be obvious. Move along, nothing to see! But there are a few problems: city-building has been in part disconnected from the human experience, and in part still is, and globally, we have overall a poor track record in making cities that are functional, liveable and “future-proofed”. But challenges are piling, and generally we want to live in urban areas that are somehow satisfying (even if it’s too late for sustainability, but that’s another story).
In the last 10 years, a lot of work has been done around “walkability”, but there is no shared understanding of what it means and therefore no consensus on how we can make walkable places. This is a problem if we want to be clear around what should be retrofit, in urban environments, so to support walking as a choice and a positive walking experience, and also what should be done differently and what we should stop doing altogether.
We started form the idea that walkability is often seen as some kind of measure of the availability of destinations. It makes sense that to walk for transport, you need a place to walk to, within a feasible distance. A major problem is however that the urban environment can present barriers — a road you struggle to cross, a stretch with heavy traffic you don’t want to be on, or just those 3 steps that you can’t cross with your wheelchair — and that most walkability measures vastly ignore them. There are a lot of assumptions around what matters (“neo-environmental determinism” (Andrews et al., 2012)), or even how far people are willing to walk. Often, studies test aspects assumed to be important, within a perimeter assumed to be the user’s “playground”, against walking behaviours — but there is no guarantee that we are examining all that could matter and that we are looking in the right places.
Everything from the start!
We took the whole problem from the start. In the paper, we examined:
· Walkability as a concept — how is it understood, what’s consensual and what’s not?
· How specific features of the urban environment are associated with walking behaviour and how they are measured
· What role individual factors (e.g. impairment or availability of other options) play, in walking behaviour.
For that, we assessed academic reviews on “walkability” published in the last 10 years, looking for theoretical developments linking built environment to walking behaviours, and proposed an extended Social Model of Walkability. We examined 194 reviews and identified 17 that address either walkability as a concept, or specific associations between built environment and walking outcomes.
From the findings, we suggested a new Social Model of Walkability, a theoretically derived framework that can support further investigation and be further informed by specific findings. The name voluntarily refers to the Social Model of Disability, in which the built environment is a key component to a person’s ability to function. We believe that this new framework can contribute to numerous calls on better understanding walking as a choice, from the perspective of the wide diversity of users having specific needs, preferences and available alternatives.
What we found
We found that “walkability” is often computed from high-level measures used as proxies (e.g. residential density). Quality is overall poorly assessed and valued, and some dimensions that have been known to be important for decades now routinely get missed (e.g. traffic volumes and speeds (Appleyard & Lintell, 1972; Jacobs, 1961); active facades, right level of enclosure and presence of other people walking (Gehl, 2010, 2011; Jacobs, 1961)).
Findings from previous studies have often been inconclusive or inconsistent. An explanation could be that the approaches used are not methodologically sound (for instance, inconsistencies in how the BE characteristics are assessed).
Severance (i.e. inability to participate due to difficulties of access) is even less understood, because of a lack of evidence and of the difficulty of capturing trips that could have been walked but were not.
The inability to provide clear outputs regarding walkability represents a key issue if research is to support cities providing environments supportive of walking as a choice, for all populations, regardless of their age, level of income or physical ability.
However, the identified associations between BE quality and walking and broader outcomes such as health and participation, strengthen the case for better understanding how the walking environment can support or deter walking as a behaviour and choice.
Why this matters
The main strength of this paper is that it presents an overview of the understanding and conceptualisation of walkability, basing on a systematic review of reviews and bridging across various disciplines. A robust stocktake on this question is particularly important now, given the importance of urban retrofit supportive of walking as a mode of transport and further public health, liveability and lower environmental impacts. We developed the Social Model of Walkability and believe it is a robust base for future research.
Limitations and future research
This paper has also limitations. Firstly, as per nature of the umbrella review, it relies on the pre-existence of narrower component reviews (Grant & Booth, 2009). However, this aspect can also bring an interesting insight regarding needs for targeted component reviews. Second, the quality of the papers has not been formally assessed, although limitations encountered have been described above. Lastly, the analysis is constrained by the mentioned limitations. Again, this aspect can provide a useful stocktake of the body of component reviews, echoing recommendations for an improved practice such as outlined by Gebel and colleagues (Gebel et al., 2015).
The present investigation pointed towards the urgent need of a systemic approach to walking, as suggested in the socio-ecological model. The roles of built environment, social context, individual characteristics, motivations and needs should therefore be considered together in relation to walking behaviours. The Social Model of Walkability that we developed here could be a good platform for this work.
Understanding users’ needs and expectations will be a core element of investigation, and participatory methods are recommended as a way forward, as previously recommended by Andrews and colleagues, amongst others (Andrews et al., 2012). This approach would reflect practices that have been developed and employed by the consumer market with great success, in the last decades (Sen & Kenyon, 2012; Stradling et al., 2007).
Spoiler alert
Since this paper was submitted, we have done an umbrella review to examine how environmental characteristics are associated with peoples’ perceptions, and we have also analysed the associations between perceptions and walking, using machine learning. Both studies developed the Social Model of Walkability, adding the “transport system” component, the idea that walking is not just assessed in itself but also in comparison with other options or combined with public transport. The dimensions of convenience and ethics were also added.
Following this, I have interviewed 56 people living in Auckland to ask them why they walk, what matters, what barriers or difficulties they might experience, what they enjoy about their walking trips and why some destinations might be within their walkable distance but still difficult to get to. A group of Citizen Scientists also started collecting qualitative insights and will be consulted on the findings. Exciting times ahead, although in lock-down.
References
Citation and full paper:
Bozovic T, Hinckson E, Smith M. Why do people walk? role of the built environment and state of development of a social model of walkability. Travel Behaviour and Society. 2020 Jul 1;20:181–91. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214367X19301152
Andrews, G. J., Hall, E., Evans, B., & Colls, R. (2012). Moving beyond walkability: On the potential of health geography. Social Science & Medicine, 75(11), 1925–1932. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2012.08.013
Appleyard, D., & Lintell, M. (1972). The Environmental Quality of City Streets: The Residents’ Viewpoint. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 38(2), 84–101. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944367208977410
Gebel, K., Ding, D., Foster, C., Bauman, A. E., & Sallis, J. F. (2015). Improving Current Practice in Reviews of the Built Environment and Physical Activity. Sports Medicine, 45(3), 297–302. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-014-0273-8
Gehl, J. (2010). Cities for People. Island Press. https://www.goodreads.com/work/best_book/13424577-cities-for-people
Gehl, J. (2011). Life Between Buildings. Island Press. https://islandpress.org/book/life-between-buildings
Grant, M. J., & Booth, A. (2009). A typology of reviews: An analysis of 14 review types and associated methodologies. Health Information and Libraries Journal, 26(2), 91–108. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-1842.2009.00848.x
Jacobs, J. (1961). The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Vintage Books.
Sen, K., & Kenyon, G. (2012). A model for assessing consumer perceptions of quality. International Journal of Quality and Service Sciences, 4(2), 175–188. https://doi.org/10.1108/17566691211232909
Stradling, S., Anable, J., & Carreno, M. (2007). Performance, importance and user disgruntlement: A six-step method for measuring satisfaction with travel modes. Transportation Research. Part A, Policy and Practice, 41(1), 98–106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2006.05.013
