The series is organised by Dr Tamara Bozovic in partnership with Walk21 and a core coordinating team including Szening Ooi, Nancy Mitchelson, Louise Reardon, Josephine Roper, Belen Iturralde, Carlos Canas, and Alan Meharry.

We propose the need of a platform to share ideas and discuss a shared approach to measure and improve the quality of the walking environment. This shared approach will help enable walking to contribute to the “quantum leap in climate action”, to urgently improve the safety and user experience of those who already walk and reduce current inequities of access. 

We would like to invite you to a workshop series – “Stepping stones for better walking environments” – aimed at accelerating discussions and building knowledge of the quality of the walking environment.

The topics for the workshop series are: 

• Why improve walking environments?
  Building a shared understanding of the ways in which the quality of the street environment influences behaviours 
• Where to improve walking environments?
  Tools and best practice for measuring quality
  
• How to improve walking environments?
  Applying an evidence-based approach to policy and governance practices 

A short note will be shared after each workshop, and the outcome of the whole process is to be brought to the Walk21 conference (Kigali, October 2023) and disseminated as a short publication.

We hope to see you in the workshops! If you have any questions, please contact Dr Tamara Bozovic, tamara.bozovic@uwe.ac.uk.

Registrations

Attendance is free. Please indicate your interest below. 

The post Workshop Series: Stepping Stones for Better Walking Environments appeared first on Walk21.

Women experience the city differently than men, in part because they are more concerned about security issues related to aggression and harassment. These concerns take the form of precautionary or avoidant behaviour. Fear of violence, perception of risk, and a sense of vulnerability are major issues when moving around the city, especially during the night time.

The new project STEP UP will address these challenges in a case study of Milan, Italy. The project was launched on 7 March 2023.

STEPUP has a duration of 12 months and is a collaboration between Transform Transport (coordinator), TeMA Lab, Sex & the City APS, and Walk21.

Links

The post New project STEPUP will address women’s feelings of safety when walking appeared first on Walk21.

Walk21 Europe is delighted to be nominated as a knowledge partner in the new Interreg project Active Cities, which was launched this month in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands. Specifically, Walk21 will provide expertise to citizen-led street transformations and mobility hub pilots in eight cities in North-West Europe. We will also support the development of planning frameworks for active mobility, as a blueprint for healthier mobility across Europe.

Urban planning, mobility and health are closely related. Car-centred city planning contributes to air and noise pollution as well as less physical activity, leading to thousands of premature deaths each year across Europe. The Active Cities Interreg project seeks to answer: How can we effectively redesign our cities to support cleaner, safer and healthier lifestyles?

Street transformations and mobility hub pilots

The EU-funded Active Cities project will implement 8 pilot initiatives with tactical urbanism (planning-by-doing) and citizen-led, short-term, low-cost, and scalable interventions. Awareness campaigns and incentive programs will also promote walking and cycling and empower citizens to take ownership of the active mobility transition in their city. These interventions will feed into planning frameworks for active mobility that will become a blueprint for healthy mobility across Europe.

Knowledge partner

For Walk21, the project is an opportunity to support cities in the redesign of urban spaces that will support all the people walking already and encourage more people to choose to be active too. Walk21 will assist the cities to engage their citizens and explore, with affordable tools, how they perceive public space and how its design is able to induce behavioural change. As a knowledge partner, Walk21 will also provide expertise to the Active Cities throughout the project and ensure the integrity and measurable impact of the projects’ overall ambition is realised.

Project details

Bax and Company are supporting the management of the Active Cities partnership which includes 3 knowledge partners (Aalborg University (DK), KU Leuven Institute for Mobility (BE) and Walk21 Europe (NL)) and the urban planning and mobility departments of 8 cities: City of Leeuwarden (NL), Groningen (NL), Aarhus (DK), Bergen (NO), Hamburg (DE), Lund (SE), Mechelen (BE) and Lille (FR)

More information

Carlos Cañas, Walk21: carlos.canas@walk21.com

Interreg North Sea Region

Active Cities receives funding from Interreg North Sea Region.

The post From sitting traffic to active people – Walk21 will provide expertise to eight cities in new Interreg project appeared first on Walk21.

CIVINET Greece-Cyprus and Walk21 share a common commitment to creating environments that offer a safe, healthy and attractive experience for people’s everyday mobility. This is already being recognised by numerous cities across Greece in their Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs).

The demand from citizens for low carbon transport systems, improvements to public health, and equitable access to education, health care, work and green space are fuelling the urgency and pace of the transition. CIVINET Greece-Cyprus has actively supported the transition process in Greek and Cypriot communities for many years and has a diverse network of members that includes large metropolitan areas as well as small island communities.

CIVINET Mobility Academy 2023

As a first step for this collaboration, nine Greek cities will participate in the recently launched CIVINET Mobility Academy 2023 in Thessaloniki on 10 February where Jim Walker, the Founder of Walk21 will provide a key-note address (Agios Dimitrios, Nea Smyrni, Vari Voula Vouliagmeni, Veria, Kavala, Kozani, Heraklion, Hersonisos, and Karpenisi).

After the keynote the cities will be encouraged to discuss common and individual challenges and will learn from experiences in Thessaloniki. Future Academy meetings are likely to also include study visits to Zagreb, Ljubljana and Athens to learn from their mobility transition experiences.

Walk21, in partnership with CIVINET Greece-Cyprus, will support the transition strategies at a national and city level as well as through the Municipal Accessibility Plans and the Local Urban Plans where appropriate. The embedding of the needs of people walking into policy frameworks will be complemented by expert advice on street and neighbourhood transformations when required. Walk21 will share learnings from other communities around the world and looks forward to helping inspire safe, healthy, and active mobility in partnership across Greece.

CIVINET Greece-Cyprus

CIVINET Greece-Cyprus is the network of local public authorities of that are dedicated to promoting sustainable mobility. It is the Greek-speaking branch of the CIVITAS National Networks (CIVINETs), the national networks of the European CIVITAS Community.

Website: www.civitas.eu/civinets/civinet-greece-cyprus

More information

• Kosmas Anagnostopoulos, CIVINET Greece-Cyprus, Coordinator, ka@civinet.gr
• Jim Walker, Director, jim.walker@walk21.com

The post Walk21 and CIVINET Greece-Cyprus partner to enable active travel appeared first on Walk21.

The Alstom Foundation has kindly supported Walk21 with the ‘Every Step of the Way’ project, in response to concerns that women are choosing to walk less and use private vehicles more in the City, as highlighted in the report commissioned by Transport Infrastructure Ireland ‘Travelling in a Woman’s Shoes’. The Government are keen to ensure Dublin is a safe, inclusive and welcoming place for women to travel and it is hoped that the App will provide a simple way to both know what their concerns are and locate where they can be resolved.

Walkability expert, Dr Lorraine D’Arcy, who teaches sustainable transport planning at TU Dublin, has been advising on the development of the app, which was also been informed by the learnings of the prototype ‘STRIDE tool‘ (supported by GIZ and first used in Lagos, Nigeria in 2018 – resulting in a new sidewalk being built to benefit thousands of school children and hospital visitors on Lagos Island); and the analogue ‘lollipop tool’ (supported by Alstom Foundation and FundaPeaton to help children in Medellin, Colombia – resulting in a transformation of their neighbourhood and reducing road crashes by 22% in the first 6 months).

The technical build of the Walkability App, which is free for any citizen to use, has been co-ordinated by Stefan Steiniger, a sustainable urban mobility expert from CEDEUS in Chile, supported by designer Luis Molina and and coders Monse Fernandez Martinez and Paula Nieto. They have been helped along the way by walkability experts from 21 countries who have kindly been trialing the app and giving feedback on its applicability internationally. Special thanks to Carlos Canas Sanz (Spain), Lucia Brisudova (Czech Republic), Richard Vinc (Indonesia), Monica Olyslagers (IRAP), Zhuangyuan Fan (China), Maja Rynning (Norway), Patricia Mariano (The Philippines) and Paschalin Basil (Kenya).

Next step for the ‘Every Step of the Way’ Dublin project will be coordinating the data collection by engaging, we hope, at least 500 women to share their opinions on local walkability in the project area. (Thanks Lidia and Tristan for helping us get started yesterday in College Green, Dublin). The technical team is also busy building the desk-top site so that the data can be visualised and analysed in the new year.

The Walkability.App is available in the App Store for Android phones and will soon be in the IOS for Apple phones too. Get in touch if you have any feedback on the app, to help us continue to improve it, or if would like to give citizens the opportunity to report on their neighbourhood walkability so that investment decisions return the best measurable benefits.

The post Women start reporting on Dublin’s Walkability appeared first on Walk21.