Search results

This chapter develops a comprehensive framework for evaluating planning decisions that affect walking conditions (“walkability”) and walking activity. It identifies various walking economic impacts (benefits and costs), describes methods for measuring those impacts, and discusses how to apply this information, based on the literature. The chapter finds that walking plays a unique and important role in an efficient and equitable transportation system, including affordable basic mobility, exercise and recreation, and access to other modes including public transit and parked cars. Walking is typically the second most common travel mode by trip mode share, and is particularly important for physically, economically and socially disadvantaged people. Improving walkability, increasing walking activity, and creating more walkable communities provides various economic, social, and environmental benefits. Conventional planning tends to undervalue many of these benefits, resulting in less support for walking than is optimal. Decision-makers increasingly want more comprehensive evaluation which considers a wider range of planning objectives and impacts. More comprehensive benefit analysis tends to justify more support for walking, and could lead to better planning decisions. Improving walking conditions helps create a more diverse, efficient, and equitable transport system which responds to changing demands and future needs. Walking is particularly important for disadvantaged people who tend to rely on walking for basic mobility, many of whom are constrained if walking conditions are poor. The analysis presented in this chapter is significantly more comprehensive than generally used in planning, and if used could lead to improved planning and enhanced walking.

This chapter introduces how the built environment and walking are connected. It looks at the interrelationships within the built environment, and how those are changing given planning and policy efforts to facilitate increased walking for both leisure activity and commuting. Using a broad review and case-based approach, the chapter examines this epistemological development of walking and the built environment over time, reviews the connections, policies and design strategies and emerging issues. The chapter shows many cases of cities which are creating a more walkable environment. It also reveals that emerging issues related to technology and autonomous vehicles, vision zero and car-free cities, and increased regional policy may play a continued role in shaping the built environment for walking. This dialogue provides both a core underpinning and a future vision for how the built environment can continue to influence and respond to pedestrians in shaping a more walkable world.

This chapter discusses individual differences in information experiences, with particular focus on emotional aspects. It reports findings from two studies that explored K12 and mature students’ experiences of uncertainty in the information search process. These experiences were related to the respondents’ personality traits and approaches to studying. The studies found that intrinsic motivation and openness to experience increased the likelihood of a pleasant information experience in a study context, while extrinsic motivation and insecurity often resulted in a negative one. Conscientious and systematic searchers tended to be foremost goal-oriented, whereby the affective tone of a search depended on the amount of progress towards the goal. Patterns of explorative or systematic searching were found both during a specific inquiry process and as broader conceptions of regularly occurring information experiences.