As walkable areas have several connections to quality of life and an increased sense of community and personal fitness, it is important to consider different policies that can be designed to promote walkability in our cities.
An example of a roundabout in Vancouver. The City of Vancouver has been attempting to implement more roundabouts in local neighbourhoods as a traffic-calming measure.
This section will examine different parties’ approaches to walkability in BC and existing measures designed to promote walkability such as improved sidewalk design, bike lane implementation, and the presence of public spaces. It will also explore different walkability measures implemented from across Canada or the world to push for policy recommendations that can reduce car-centric infrastructure and enhance active transportation, like the 15-minute-city.
The major political parties in BC (left to right: Liberal Party, Conservative Party, New Democratic Party, Green Party).
Walkability is an incredibly nebulous area in terms of urban planning and policies. As such, policies that explicitly talk about walkability are a bit rare in Canadian cities. To combat this, policies that embrace walkability will often be discussed through municipal traffic-reduction initiatives, street and sidewalk design, connection to public transportation and public spaces, and more broadly the conversation surrounding car-centric infrastructure and developments.
Nevertheless, we plan to discuss how walkability should be an upcoming area of focus policymakers should take on, especially if they work in urban cities.
The NDP has demonstrated interest in improving how Canadians get to and from work and is very candid about being a public transit-forward political party for Canada.