XIV International Conference on Walking and Liveable Communities Munich, 11-13 September 2013
1. Viruses can be both good and bad. There are 60m more cars globally every year and this influences our mindset and impacts on an increasing number of our daily decisions. We need to be positively promoting ‘promenades’ rather than automobilecentric ‘carfree’ moments – learning from the infectious insights of writers like Munich’s Sigi Sommer, who walked the streets to find his stories, to connect with people; understand their frustrations; and illuminate their needs.
2. Do the wrong thing. Classical formal instruments that, often with the best of intentions, provide frameworks, laws and guidance to help meet pedestrians’ needs do not always allow the most appropriate outcomes for a community if followed to the letter. Creative, informal opportunities to make small, local changes can help deliver improvements more quickly, give confidence to local communities and further influence a review of the traditional approaches. There are a growing number of examples where community activists, like Better Block, have instigated imaginative and immediate change leading to new and more flexible structures being set up to support more walkable communities
3. Imagine your city is a book and ask what story it tells. The City of Munich invited residents to share their own story on a postcard to help write the next chapter in their City history. A strategy followed to open up a network of ‘short cuts’ through and between buildings; a quiet zone in the city to allow bird song to soothe patients recuperating in the central city hospital; and an investment programme in quality footway surfaces, as the defining touchpoint with the community’s soles to help shape the soul of the City.
4. Zero is the only acceptable target. Globally, 270,000 people every year die as pedestrians in crashes with road traffic. The WHO and OECD/ITF presented new publications to provide us with the understanding, resources and strategic frameworks for taking action. The most effective action, to reduce the number of walkers dying prematurely, was agreed as encouraging more people onto the streets as pedestrians, to get them walking and making the public space their own.
5. Walking makes you younger. The average walk in Germany, like many parts of the developed world, is now down to 800m long – not much time to appreciate the rhythm and joy of walking and usually not often or intense enough to be of any physical or mental benefit. Recent genetic studies have proven that frequent and regular intervals of vigorous walking will make you look and feel ten years younger.
We learnt too that communities, particularly as their citizens get older, are looking for greater empathy and tolerance so that their needs – for seating, toilets and places to meet and talk – are available as an extension of their living space.
As inspired influencers of change, we were all invited to ‘blackmail ourselves’ by publishing a date and committing to an action, however small, that would make a positive effect on helping people’s journeys on foot to be safer, more attractive and accessible.
For a detailed review, the conference presentations and photos are now available and can be downloaded atwww.walk21munich.com.
Source: Walk21
October 2013
By Jim Walker
https://www.walk21munich.com/frontend/converia_asp/media/Walk21/Files/W21MunichConclusions2013.pdf
