[This content first appeared on LinkedIn on 8 January 2025]
This week: twins, Barcelona and unicycles!
Nice News have reported that twins have been helping to illustrate the importance of creating walkable places.
We already know the importance of this: reduced car dependency… a cleaner environment… improved physical and mental health… the list goes on and on.
But what the twins add to the conversation, given their shared genetics and backgrounds, is proof that between people of a very similar disposition, those who walk more are indeed better off financially and health-wise than those who don’t. Who’d have guessed?
The study looked at how the environment affects people’s propensity to walk and those twins living close to shops and amenities – the dreaded 15-minute city concept – were indeed walking more than their siblings.
Similarly, when the walking environment was enhanced, for example with additional pavements and crossings – quelle surprise! – people walked more.
But as I’ve discussed in earlier pieces, you can live within what, on the face of it, is a 15-minute neighbourhood, but if the walking environment is low grade, car dominated and not overlooked, it will deter walking. We need a holistic approach.
A desire and ability to walk for day-to-day short journeys is affected by a number of things, one of which is feeling safe on the pavements – just being able to relax and perhaps zone out a little, confident you won’t be run over in a pedestrian area before reaching your destination shouldn’t be too much to ask.
Well, the city of Barcelona is to start fining anyone riding an e-scooter on the pavement and/or without a helmet up to €500. There are around 44,000 e-scooter journeys a day and with a top speed of 25mph scooters have become the getaway vehicle of choice for bag and mobile phone thieves.
Any collision involving a scooter travelling that fast is likely to end badly for the pedestrian/s being hit and the rider/s themselves.
A new bylaw would limit speed to 15.5mph, as here in the UK, but the ability to enforce these restrictions will be key. Back in Bournemouth, private e-scooters, e-skateboards and e-unicycles were a common sight yet none of these were legally allowed on the road – or pavement.
Similarly, delivery people riding motor scooters through pedestrianised areas and cars parking on the footways and causing damage to pavements the Council would then have to pay to fix were also normal occurrences. It’s a big commitment to systematically hand out the fines.
I have no issue in principle with micromobility devices being used in cycle lanes as they don’t mix well with pedestrians. But, without a cohesive, joined up cycle network, we don’t yet have the infrastructure in place to make this feasible and buy-in would of course be needed from cycling groups.
But the fact remains: encouraging more active forms of travel can only be a good thing in our car sick society.
#carsick #placemaking #barcelona #15minutecity