Measuring Walkability to Improve It

"As each country takes a slightly different approach to creating walking-friendly cities, one global organisation is working to connect and empower urban governments, citizens and communities to achieve a walkable future," reports Walkonomics. "Since its foundation in 2000 Walk21 has organised an annual international conference in over 10 different countries," and "has also championed the International Charter for Walking, which has been signed by over 4,000 people and organisations including several mayor’s and city governments."

The group's newest initiative, the ‘Making Walking Count‘ [PDF] project, measures the walkability of global cities across a common set of criteria. "Each city can see how they compare against other global cities and which areas they need to improve in," says Walkonomics. "So far the project has benchmarked London, Barcelona, Copenhagen and Canberra [PDF] and also audited New York and Stuttgart."