Where to Find a Walkable City

On June 30, New York City will start its congestion pricing initiative.

Becoming less car friendly could make it more of a walkable city.

Walkable Cities

According to a triangular graphic from “The ABC of Mobility,” New York City is solidly in the lower right side everyone drives section. Not alone, NYC is joined by many cities in the U.S. and Canada.

Representing a single mode of transport. in “Corner A,” everyone walks or cycles, “B” is public transport, and “C” is cars:

Grouping the 794 cities in the study, we have 22.4% characterized by Active Mobility, while 26.2% tilt toward Public Transport, and a whopping 51.4% depend on cars. Outside of the United States, the larger your city, the less likely that people turn to active mobility. Below, dot size is proportional to population:

As you might expect, in larger cities with more congestion and bigger areas for people to navigate, Public Transport is prevalent. However, more affluence brings extra cars.  Comparing two cities, the one with twice the income will have 37% more journeys by car. But regions do have differences. The U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand lean toward cars while Europe is varied. In Utrecht, people depend on walking and bicycling, for London and Paris it’s Public Transport, and Rome, cars. At the other extreme, we have Asia’s big cities where no matter the affluence, public transport is people’s norm.

Our Bottom Line: Tradeoffs

Requiring more resources, cars deplete the environment. They diminish safety, inefficiently use space, and require costly infrastructure. When they encourage a sedentary lifestyle, obesity is likely. In addition, cars facilitate low-density suburban living where individual housing units use up more resources. As for CO2 emissions, it’s the driving that creates an estimated 75% of  household level pollution. And, even with EVs, many of the problems remain.

However, as economists, we should note the tradeoffs. Transitioning to walkable cities, we would have to sacrifice the convenience, speed, comfort, and accessibility that our cars give us. It is a cost that few of us are willing to pay.

My sources and more: The Economist had the best summary of the world’s walkable cities (and those that were not). However, for much more detail, do take a look at this paper (from which I got many of my facts and all of my graphics).