In urban planning, walkability is the accessibility of amenities within a reasonable walking distance. This concept is based on the idea that urban spaces should serve purposes beyond mere transport corridors designed for maximum vehicle throughput. Instead, the objective should be to create relatively complete, livable spaces that serve a variety of uses, users, and transportation modes, thereby reducing the need for cars for travel. The first of the ten principles of New Urbanism is walkability.
Etymology In a 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs proposed radically new principles for rebuilding cities by increasing urban diversity, density, and dynamism, or in effect: to crowd people and activities together in a jumping, joyous urban jumble. While her seminal book never used the term walkability, a New Urbanism was launched.
To bring Jacob's vision into the urban planning mainstream, empirical research was needed. In 1994, Lawrence D. Frank and Gary Pivo provided some of the earliest and frequently cited quantifications of the link between urban design and walking. In 2001, Frank and Engelke published a frequently cited review of evidence for the claim that urban design can increase walking and biking and improve public health.
In 2003, the term walkability was repeatedly used in a frequently cited academic article: Environmental Correlates of Walking and Cycling. Based on a comprehensive literature review the authors concluded that high density urban design, walking, and public health were empirically interrelated. They also called for the creation of a walkability index.
In 2004, another highly cited article, Obesity Relationships with Community Design, Physical Activity, and Time Spent in Cars, quantitatively linked walkability to obesity. A 2026 commentary by Margaret B. Nolan refers to the article as remarkably prescient.
The term walkability became popular because of its health, economic, and environmental benefits. It is an essential concept of sustainable urban design. Factors influencing walkability include the presence or absence and quality of footpaths, sidewalks or other pedestrian rights-of-way, traffic and road conditions, land use patterns, building accessibility, and safety, among others.Online TDM Encyclopedia chapter on pedestrian improvements
Factors
One proposed definition for walkability is: "The extent to which the built environment is friendly to the presence of people living, shopping, visiting, enjoying or spending time in an area".Abley, Stephen. "Walkability Scoping Paper" 21 March 2005. Retrieved 4/21/08 A study attempted to comprehensively and objectively measure subjective qualities of the urban street environment. Using ratings from an expert panel, it was possible to measure five urban design qualities in terms of physical characteristics of streets and their edges: imageability, enclosure, human scale, transparency and complexity. Walkability relies on the interdependencies between density, mix, and access in synergy. The urban DMA (Density, Mix, Access) is a set of synergies between the ways cities concentrate people and buildings, how they mix different people and activities, and the access networks used to navigate through them.
These factors cannot be taken singularly. Rather than an ideal functional mix, there is a mix of mixes and interdependencies between formal, social, and functional mixes. Likewise, walkable access cannot be reduced to any singular measure of connectivity, permeability, or catchment but is dependent on destinations and geared to metropolitan access through public transit nodes. While DMA is based on walkability measures, popular "walk score" or "rate my street" websites offer more metrics to connect urban morphology with better environmental and health outcomes.
Density Density is an interrelated assemblage of buildings, populations, and street life. It is a crucial property of walkability because it concentrates more people and places within walkable distances. There is difficulty determining density due to populations oscillating from the suburbs to the urban center. Moreover, measures of density can differ dramatically for different morphologies and building typologies. Density may be conflated with building height, contributing to the confusion.
The ratio between the floor area and the site area is generally known as the Floor Area Ratio (FAR, also called Plot Ratio and Floor Space Index). For example, a ten-story building on 10% of the site has the same floor area as a single-story building with 100% site coverage. Secondly, the measure of dwellings/hectare is common but particularly blunt. It depends on the functional mix, household size, and dwelling size in relation to building or population densities. Larger houses will produce higher building densities for the same population, and larger households will lead to higher populations for the same number of dwellings. In functionally mixed neighborhoods, housing will be just one component of the mix and therefore not a measure of building or population density. The census-based density of residents/hectare is another common measure, but it does not include those who work there.
Functional mix When each neighbourhood has a mixture of homes, schools, work and other places people want to visit, the distances between these places are shortened. This makes it more attractive for people to walk. The idea of a functional mix contrasts with the early 20th century modernist vision, which was that each zone in a city should have a single function. This mix is sometimes visualised with the "home, work, visit" triangle. The extremes of the triangle represent zones where one can only work, or visit, or live. A walkable city has few of these zones. Instead, there are places where when can combine at least two of the three functions. When a town or city has smaller plot sizes, it is easier to create a multi-functional neighbourhood.
Access networks
The access networks of a city enable and constrain pedestrian flows. It is the capacity or possibility to walk. Like density and mix, these are properties embodied in urban form and facilitate more efficient pedestrian flows. Access networks are also multi-modal and need to be understood from the perspective of those who choose between modes of walking, cycling, public transport, and cars. Public transport trips are generally coupled with walkable access to the transit stop. Walking will primarily be chosen for up to 10 minutes if it is the fastest mode and other factors are equal. Walking has the advantage that it is a much more predictable trip time than public transport or cars, where we have to allow for delays caused by poor service, congestion, and parking.
Major infrastructural factors include access to mass transit, presence and quality of footpaths, buffers to moving traffic (planter strips, on-street parking or bike lanes) and pedestrian crossings, aesthetics, nearby local destinations, air quality, shade or sun in appropriate seasons, street furniture, traffic volume and speed, and wind conditions. Walkability is also examined based on the surrounding built environment. Reid Ewing and Robert Cervero's five D's of the built environment—density, diversity, design, destination accessibility, and distance to transit—heavily influence an area's walkability.Ewing, Reid and Cervero, Robert. "Travel and the Built Environment: A Meta-Analysis", Journal of the American Planning Association, vol 76, no 3 (2010): 265-294. Combinations of these factors influence an individual's decision to walk.Wang, Ke. "Causality Between Built Environment and Travel Behavior: Structural Equations Model Applied to Southern California." Transportation Research Record, no 2397 (2013): 80- 88.
History
Before cars and bicycles were mass-produced, walking was the main way to travel. In the 1920s, economic growth led to increased automobile manufacturing. Cars were also becoming more affordable, leading to the rise of the automobile during the Post–World War II economic expansion.Hendee, Caitlin. "More on the cover story: A short history of walkable urbanism and transit-oriented development". Denver Business Journal.
Jane Jacobs' classic book The Death and Life of Great American Cities remains one of the most influential books in the history of American city planning, especially concerning the future developments of the walkability concept. She coined the terms "social capital", "mixed primary uses", and "eyes on the street", which were adopted professionally in urban design, sociology, and many other fields.
While there has been a push towards better walkability in cities in recent years, there are still many obstacles that need to be cleared to achieve more complete and cohesive communities where residents won't have to travel as far to get to where they need to go. For example, the average time it has taken American commuters to get to work has actually increased from 25 minutes in 2006 to 27.6 minutes in 2019, so much is still to be done if walkability is to be realized and a lessened reliance on cars comes into fruition.
Benefits Health
Walkability indices have been found to correlate with both lower Body Mass Index (BMI) and high levels of physical activity of local populations. Physical activity can prevent chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, depression, and osteoporosis.Gase, Lauren N., Paul A. Simon, et al.. "Public Awareness of and Support for Infrastructure Changes Designed to Increase Walking and Biking in Los Angeles County." Preventive Medicine 72 (2015): 70-75. Thus for instance, an increase in neighborhood Walk Score has linked with both better Cardio metabolic risk profiles and a decreased risk of heart-attacks. The World Cancer Research Fund and American Institute for Cancer Research released a report that new developments should be designed to encourage walking, on the grounds that walking contributes to a reduction of cancer. A further justification for walkability is founded upon evolutionary and philosophical grounds, contending that gait is important to the cerebral development in humans.Stanford, Craig (2003) Upright: The Evolutionary Key to Becoming Human, Houghton-Mifflin: New York, pp. 122-171
In addition, walkable neighborhoods have been linked to higher levels of happiness, health, trust, and social connections in comparison with more car-oriented places.Leyden, K.M., Hogan, M.J., D'Arcy, L., Bunting, B. and Bierema, S., 2024. Walkable neighborhoods: Linkages between place, health, and happiness in younger and older adults. Journal of the American Planning Association, 90(1), pp.101-114. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2022.2123382
In contrast to walkable environments, less walkable environments are associated with higher BMIs and higher rates of obesity. This is particularly true for the more car-dependent environments of US suburban sprawl. Compared to walking and biking, driving as a commuting option is associated with higher levels of obesity. There are well-established links between the design of an urban area (including its walkability and land use policy) and health outcomes for that community.
A 2025 study, using the smartphone data of more than two million users, found that individuals who move to more walkable cities substantially increase their physical activity, "For example, moving from a less walkable (25th percentile) city to a more walkable city (75th percentile) increased walking by 1,100 daily steps, on average. These changes hold across different genders, ages and body mass index values, and are sustained over 3 months. The added activity is predominantly composed of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, which is linked to an array of associated health benefits."
Socioeconomic