How Can Walkable Cities Become the Norm? | One Small Step

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[thesprucemoose]

The idea of a non-walkable city still boggles my mind, I had never experienced one until I went to the states. Would not recommend, it's like someone built a city but had never actually met a human being before.

[pelicanformation]

As a young mother pushing a stroller I really appreciated enabling infrastructure.

[fdm]

I love exploring cities on foot when I travel. I live in a very walkable city and there have been so many improvements in the past 10 years. Curb cuts, bike lines, new paint for cross walks, better signage. Still a long way to go but it's great to see the progress.

[AlexCab_]

We also need good transit to support walkability

[dohminkonoha]

Ban the cars in cities.
Turn car lanes into bicycle, Train and green belt.

[warmwavess]

I wish all cities were walkable. I visited Toronto and I was walking the whole day. My legs were in so much pain after because im not used to walking so much. Unfortunately I live in a smaller city where you need to drive to get to places

[mikemhz]

I think also there needs to be measure for bikes and electric scooters, too. Cheaper yo run than cars and a little better than walking city distances. As Simeone pointed out, concrete isnt the best for your joints.

[sadiemcnabb]

I love my walkable city. It takes 1 hour tops to make it from one side to the opposite. Used to live dead-center and I could walk everywhere!

[priscillajimenez]

Tokyo is really good with their infrastructure. Many people dont even need cars

[zando]

there are people who walk LESS than 8 minutes a day??

[anahidkassabian]

These are all wonderful and important ideas and approaches, and I genuinely mean that. But as a person with a number of disabilities who has difficulty walking far and sometimes needs a wheelchair, the biggest problem I have in cities that are promoting walking is that when I am having a very bad day, I cannot get to any shops or venues or restaurants that are more than a 25m inside pedestrian areas.
I cannot afford a motorized wheelchair, nor an aide to push me. Also the bumpy cobblestones and similar materials turn my wheelchair into a torture device. So I am simply *locked out* of whole areas except on very good days. I wish someone were working on that issue.

[tashikoweinstein]

Who would have thought I was extremely old fashion and years ahead by walking everywhere!

[anewagora]

I lived in a walkable biking city for a decade. Transportation was part of the most enjoyable experiences. I bike year round for transportation. All of this was integral to my empowerment as a teenager escaping a toxic childhood into full self determination, and even led me to become a youth mentor and empowerment advocate.

I recently moved across the country and have experienced my first American suburb up close and personal. It's commonly accepted back home that city people despise the suburbs, so we generally know the desolate nature of suburbanism. But I've never seen it so dire and desperate until my experiences now. It left me isolated and almost destitute trying to crawl my way to stability. I ended up getting a car at my poorest and worst health because there are so few jobs here in this copy-paste corporate wasteland. Shortly after I learned many other poor people around me are in the same boat. Car ownership is modern day indentured servitude. It is nothing short of absolutely shocking and disgusting to me how this world has been created when we had historic opportunities to create something so much better.

This issue is now one of the most important in my life and I will dedicate to getting people on board to tackle suburbanism NOW.

[thomasfesler]

Where I live they have climate action goals and one was to make the city more walkable which I am excited about and they have already started making adjustments and more sidewalks

[MattJohno]

I live in the UK. Walking here is considered just the norm. If you live in a city there's no need to own a car as you can easily walk or cycle wherever you need to go. It's the same across most of Europe. If I really wanted to, I could probably walk the coastline of britain without having to worry about being hit by a car.

[warw]

If this video was interesting, please check out 'not just bikes' or eco gecko's playlist about suburbia
Great video!

[Yavin]

The other cost that cars levy on the environment is space. Regulations mandate that businesses create huge parking lots which means less green areas. Also, cars need more and more roads which also eat up more green space.

[rishabhanand]

5:38 also, the higher cost is literally due to demand. More dense areas are much cheaper to build and maintain. The reason dense areas are expensive is because so many people want to live in walkable places vs what's available that landlords can really jack up the price and still fill their spaces. If more cities were walkable with medium-high density population, the prices would probably be much lower for individual units.

[tylermacdonald]

Please!!! We need to have people seeing each other, and stop using fossil fuels!

[donovan]

Good presentation. But people make this so much harder than it has to be. The solution is to simply up abolish much of the existing zoning laws, up zone entire cities and focus on mass transit and everything falls else into place. There's no masterplanning needed. Look at Oslo, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, etc. They aren't masterplanned, they just allow the market to build the housing and walkable neighborhoods that people want. The reason why we don't have these walkable cities in North America isn't because there's not enough "conversation", its because the State prohibits it.