Who Said Walking Couldn’t Be Cool or Fun?
by Tony Chavira
Following this past week's Walk21, the international conference that promotes cool, interactive walkability in community design and planning, Jori Lewis at New American City posted about some of the interesting programs and plans that officials have to promote smart growth and walkability in their cities:
Planners from around the world met to talk about how their countries address pedestrian issues, from Mexico City to London to Guangzhou. Sarah Gaventa, Director of CABE Space in the U.K., spoke at the opening plenary and noted that walkability can contribute to the economic life of cities by increasing opportunities for street-level retail.
In another workshop on solutions in big cities, Felipe Leal, Minister of Urban Development and Housing in Mexico City, spoke about their work to reclaim troubled public spaces. The city has been targeting places like Plaza Garibaldi, known for its raucous nightlife full of mariachi bands and bars and pickpockets. They want to make it safer and more attractive for pedestrians during the day by adding a tequila and mescal museum and a music school to anchor the plaza.They also instituted a city wide campaign called “Todos somos peatones. Vamos a caminar” (“We are all pedestrians. Let’s walk”). Ryan Russo of the City of New York talked about that city’s attempts to create pedestrian malls on Broadway by shutting it down to car traffic in certain zones.Other workshops focused on the health effects of walking and proposed partnerships between departments of health and departments of transportation to improve a city’s walking culture. Still others looked at how food deserts emerge, even in neighborhoods with high population density. In New York City, they are tackling that dilemma, concentrated among low-income neighborhoods with high rates of diet-related diseases, by creating incentives to build fresh-food supermarkets in underserved areas.
I didn't include any of the links, so click on over to Jori's article to read more about how awesome the Walk21 presentations were and some more details about the possibilities of programs to increase walkability. You know as well as I do that Los Angeles is in desperate need of programs and plans that enhance both the walking experience and the ease of walking in general. Personally, I think that one great and easy solution might be as simple as Southern California cities infusing local artwork throughout the public street scene, just to force people to slow down and check it out. It works in the Arts District in Downtown, in Downtown Long Beach, and currently enriching the walking experiencing in downtown Santa Ana... why wouldn't it work elsewhere?
I mean, imagine if we put these throughout Downtown LA stairways:
Or let's switch up the piano for a beat machine and samples! Oh the possibilities.
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