Strategies and Implications that Can be Used to Improve Walkability through Urban Design

Abstract

Designing spaces for walking has become popular in the belief that it contributes positively to health status, environmental conservation, economic development, and social coherence. As such there is increasing need to assess how walkable our cities are so that we can plan better for their future. “Walkability” refers to how enjoyable it is to walk around an area and it forms an integral part of urban design that helps make a city healthy, sustainable and lively. This paper aims at exploring deeply into urban design’s role in promoting walkability within different settings with researches findings as well as real life examples being highlighted on various ways on how best pedestrian friendly environments can be developed. In addition to this it also examines the benefits realized by having more walk able towns in terms of environment efficiency and economy opportunities as well as drawbacks faced when bringing about this aspect. Besides linking past studies together through this paper provides insights on relevance of the above-mentioned concept on policy makers, planners in town planning fields and designers. It gives a detailed account behind telling us that we need “walkable cities” and goes further ahead explaining what makes our cities as they are given their architecture design implications for daily footsteps in each quadrant. Keywords: Walkability, Built Environment, Pedestrian Safety, Urban Design, Neighbourhood Design.