These are the world’s best cities for walking 

Walking is the world’s most common form of transport.

And a new study has now quantified which of the globe’s metropolises are the easiest to navigate by foot. Paris features in two of the top five lists in Pedestrians First, a report from the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP).

Walkability is assessed by analyzing factors such as how close key services like education and healthcare are to where people live, and how much car-free space there is. Applying these criteria enabled the Pedestrians First team to establish which cities are currently the most walkable on the planet.

The criteria

More work to be done

Overall, the report says, cities are still hostile to pedestrians, especially in the United States.

The four most walkable US cities are Baltimore, Boston, New York and San Francisco. While the four with the lowest walkability scores are Atlanta, Indianapolis, Orlando and San Antonio.

Making cities more pedestrian-friendly calls for better planning, according to the report’s lead author, D. Taylor Reich.

“Walkable cities don’t happen by accident,” says Reich, Research Associate at ITDP. “Policymakers first have to understand the problems that car-oriented planning has caused. Then they can take specific steps: from planning dense, human-scale, mixed-use developments to equipping streets with benches, wide sidewalks and shade.”

Achieving sustainable cities

Across much of the world, as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, traffic volumes fell as cities went into various stages of lockdown and people began working remotely. Whether this turns into a longer-term trend is still too soon to say. But making cities more sustainable is one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Improving pedestrian accessibility and increasing the availability of public transport are two of the sub-goals within that SDG.

A 2019 survey of 610 cities in 95 countries found that “only half of the world’s urban population had convenient access to public transport,” according to the UN, describing such access as “a basic urban need”.

Addressing the challenges facing urban development, from poor housing stock to polluted air, is one of the World Economic Forum’s objectives, too. Events like the Global Future Council on Cities of Tomorrow are part of coordinated efforts to ensure the benefits of the Fourth Industrial Revolution can help make cities great places to live and work.