What is walkability and why does it matter in cities?

Walkability is an urban metric that assesses the quality of spaces for pedestrian movement. It is a concept that goes far beyond the basic infrastructure of sidewalks: it involves safety, comfort, universal accessibility, diversity of uses, and sensory stimuli. In contemporary cities, understanding and applying the principles of walkability is essential for enhancing public spaces, promoting belonging, among other benefits.

Jeff Speck, an American urban planner and an international reference on the topic, systematized four essential criteria for creating walkable cities: utility, safety, comfort, and interest. This means that for walking to be a real and pleasurable choice, the routes need to lead to useful destinations, be protected from traffic, offer adequate physical conditions, and evoke visual and social stimuli along the way. His approach, presented in the book Walkable City, is based on robust studies and includes the case of Portland (USA) as a relevant example of a city that integrated these principles into public policies, promoting networks of active mobility connected to urban planning and landscaping.

Copenhagen, Denmark, is one of the world's greatest references in walkability. Based on a 40-year urban transformation plan, the city has gradually been redesigned to prioritize pedestrians and cyclists, reducing the space for automobiles and enhancing the public environment. The result is a city that functions on a human scale: with wide sidewalks, accessible gathering spaces, and integrated active mobility infrastructure, where walking and staying are natural parts of everyday life.

However, despite the progress of these examples, a large part of cities is still marked by spatial fragmentation, car centrality, and unsafe or disconnected routes. In this context, walkability emerges as an interdisciplinary field of knowledge and an agenda for transformation. It encompasses themes such as sustainable mobility, urban design, sensory experience, community strengthening, and sense of belonging. Walking is more than a means of transportation: it is a way to experience the city with the body and the senses.

In this regard, Danish architect Jan Gehl argues that the city should be considered from the scale of the human body. For him, walking is the most basic way to experience and activate public space. Streets with active facades, smooth transitions between private and public, functional diversity, and the presence of nature promote not only mobility but also togetherness, health, and urban vitality. For those looking to begin understanding cities made for people, we recommend reading Cities for People, as it presents the fundamentals of this approach in an accessible and applied manner.

Among the facets of walking, there is also, for example, the view of it as an interpretive and creative act, as studied by the Italian Francesco Careri. In Walkscapes, he argues that walking through the city is also a way of constructing landscape, activating memories, affections, and possibilities for appropriating space. This perspective has inspired contemporary methodologies of urban listening and community involvement. Walking also becomes an aesthetic, sensitive, and social tool.

Thus, walkability is not only a technical issue but a sociocultural choice that directly influences how we collectively inhabit urban territories. To place qualified walking as an non-negotiable principle of landscape and urban project is to acknowledge that urban experience begins with the body — and unfolds in the relationships between individuals, spaces, and communities. Walkable cities not only function better: they are more human, accessible, and inclusive. And this sense of belonging is, ultimately, what makes urban space truly alive.