Our cities should be built for walking first
A street that is pleasant to walk along is good for health, good for local shops and good for everyone who cannot or does not drive.
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Every trip begins and ends on foot. Even the most dedicated driver walks from the car park to the door. Yet many streets are designed as if walking were an afterthought: a narrow strip of pavement left over once the lanes, the parking and the turning space have been allocated.
The result is familiar. Pavements that are too narrow for two people to pass with a pushchair. Crossings placed for the convenience of traffic flow rather than where people actually want to cross. Junctions so wide that crossing them feels like a gamble. None of this is inevitable. It is the product of choices, and choices can be made differently.
Who loses when walking is hard
Children, older people, disabled people and anyone who cannot afford a car depend most on safe, direct footpaths and crossings. When a busy road has no crossing for half a mile, they either take a risk or stay at home.
That second outcome is easy to overlook because it leaves no trace. Nobody records the trip that did not happen: the older neighbour who stopped walking to the shops, the teenager who is driven everywhere because the route to school feels unsafe, the wheelchair user who cannot get past a parked van. A street that is hostile to walking quietly shrinks the lives of the people who rely on it most.
Who gains when it is easy
Streets designed for people on foot tend to be good for business: people walking past a shop window are more likely to step inside than people driving past it, and they are more likely to come back often. Walking is also one of the simplest ways to build physical activity into daily life, without a gym membership or a timetable.
There are wider benefits too. Streets where people walk tend to feel safer, because there are more eyes on them. Children who can walk to school gain a measure of independence. And every short trip made on foot rather than by car is one less vehicle in the queue for those who genuinely need to drive.
The strongest objection
The most serious objection comes from people who depend on their cars: tradespeople carrying tools, carers making several visits a day, families in areas with poor public transport, and many disabled people for whom driving is the most practical option. For them, wider pavements and fewer parking spaces can look like a policy designed by people who do not share their constraints. Shopkeepers often raise similar worries about losing passing trade from drivers.
These concerns deserve a genuine answer, not a dismissal. The first part of that answer is that walking first does not mean walking only. Deliveries, emergency vehicles, blue-badge parking and essential access all have to be planned for, and good schemes do this from the start. The second part is that the goal is choice. When walking is safe and pleasant for short trips, some of those trips move out of cars, which tends to make the roads less congested for people who have no alternative. The third is process: changes work best when they are trialled, measured and adjusted with the people affected, rather than imposed overnight.
What it takes
None of this requires grand projects. Small, practical changes make a difference:
- Wider, clear pavements, free of clutter such as badly placed signs and bins.
- More frequent crossings, placed on the lines people actually walk, with enough time to cross at a slower pace.
- Dropped kerbs and level surfaces, so that pushchairs, wheelchairs and walking frames are not stopped by a lip of stone.
- Shade, benches and lighting, which matter most to people who need to rest or who walk after dark.
- Lower speeds on residential streets, which make crossing easier and collisions less serious.
- Shops and services within reach of homes, which is ultimately a planning decision as much as a transport one.
Many cities have already made such changes on individual streets, and they are worth studying, including where they went wrong. Councils can start with a single route, such as the walk from a station to a high street or from a housing estate to a school, and fix it properly.
Design a street for the most vulnerable person who might use it, and it will usually work better for everyone else as well.
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