Making our Busiest Cities More Walkable

The city of Toronto is currently hosting an international conference on walking.  That’s the first I’ve heard of this event called “Walk21″.  This is great news for new urbanism advocates who work tirelessly to sell the benefits of pedistrian friendly communities.  Conferences like this raise the profile on this issue and serve to encourage more developers, planners, and residents to support the development or re-development of communities that are aligned to new urbanism principles.

Toronto is a wonderfully liveable city, but it is slowly choking itself to death with the volume of cars that clog up its roadways.  This morning envirnomentalists in the area were thrilled to hear a Toronto city councillor announce that “remaking the new suburuban neighborhood” so that they are more walkable is among the biggest challenges that regional politicians were going to tackle in the year ahead.

Ideas the city plans to put into place by next year include everything from extending the time on those count down pedestrian signals at intersections to closing off strees to some vehicles.

Full story from the Toronto Star(article by Tess Kalinowski).

Tags: New Urbanism