“No urban area will prosper unless it attracts those who can choose to live wherever they wish. ”
Global, national, regional and local economies are changing. Mass consumption and ever growing traffic are out; sustainable systems are in. Many corporate leaders, who are looking to expand or change locations, are looking less for towns offering start up breaks, and more for locations where they and their middle managers want to live, raise families and retire. Walkable and livable communities attract and retain many of the best professionals, and this attribute expands jobs for working and service class residents. Today, millenials seek great towns and places to live first, they shop for good employment with companies they respect... or they start new enterprises in order to live there. Walkable communities call for vibrant leadership collaboration, not just good management teams. Walkable communities are organic, sometimes a bit messy and slightly unorganized at first, but they are places where people want to work together for better communities.
Walkability is the cornerstone and key to an urban area's efficient ground transportation. Every trip begins and ends with walking. Walking remains the cheapest form of transport for all people. Construction of a walkable community provides the most affordable and equitable transportation system any community can plan, design, build and maintain. Walkable communities return urban environments to scale, pattern and mix for sustainability of resources (both natural and economic). They lead to more social interaction, physical fitness, diminished crime, and increased wellness, addressing many social and economic problems. Walkable communities are more liveable built environments and lead to whole, happy, healthy lives for the people who live in them.
A recent study, Emerging Trends in Real Estate, calls pedestrian-friendly traditional neighborhood developments (TNDs) the newest “market to watch.” “Sample the attitudes of suburbanites today and you’ll find a growing number who think their lifestyle is becoming more difficult and less appealing. [They are] exasperated by the amount of time spent trapped in their cars.” Roadway congestion and dependence on automobile travel detract from the livability of communities-particularly for seniors, parents and their children, and people with disabilities. Suburban development has become less inviting to investors, who now must evaluate the consequences of low-density development.
New home buyers are looking for neighborhoods that are family-friendly, with sidewalks and calm traffic, green space and trails. Good schools have long been an important factor for parents in deciding where to buy a home-now many are also concerned about having good ways for their children to get to school. A growing number of retirees are also looking for more walkable places and spaces in which to live, and more options for travel.
Creating walkable communities is a challenge: much of what we’ve done over the past 50 years-in terms of how we’ve developed our communities and our transportation facilities-has made it harder to walk and to get to places we might want to go. Still, many people do walk, and there are signs that they’d like to do more of it. This is good news because we need to make walking a more regular, routine part of our lives-and of our children’s lives-again. We need to give people more choices on how to travel when it comes time to make a trip to the store, to go to school, to go to the park or library, or to visit a friend. We need to make neighborhoods places where parents feel comfortable with their children running around, playing with friends. We need to make our communities places where the elderly and the disabled are free to move around in relative comfort and safety. We need to make the places where we live and the places where we work environments that encourage us to be active-to walk to the store, to walk to lunch, or perhaps to take an evening stroll just for the health of it! That’s why we need to make our communities more walkable.
Perhaps the most important ingredients for the success of this endeavor are the belief that it can be done and the commitment to make it happen.