This paper builds upon earlier work which was presented at Walk21 in 2009 and 2010 which outlined the development of a number of radically different visions for the role of walking and cycling in urban areas in the year 2030. These visions, which were developed through consultation with a wide range of stakeholders, present a 2030 where walking and cycling play a significantly greater role in urban transportation than is currently the case, accounting for as much as 80% of urban trips in the most extreme vision. Previous reported work had focussed on the kinds of measures, contextual background and lifestyle changes which would be required to support such visions, how urban areas may appear and the practicalities of daily life. Subsequent research (not yet reported in the public domain) has developed methods for constructing pathways to show how these visions might be reached. A pathway (in a specific city) to the successful occurrence of a vision is defined as being made up of a combination of developments on two separate levels: a Macro level , involving both developments external to the transport system and developments within the transport system but “out of control” of the local authority of the city concerned ; and a Micro level, involving developments within the control of the city’s local authority. The trajectory of developments on a particular level is referred to as a ‘storyline’, so that a distinction is made between Macro - storylines and Micro- storylines. Whilst generic macro - storylines have been developed which are relevant to all UK cities, micro - storylines can only be constructed ‘locally’ by those with sufficient knowledge of a particular city. The focus of the current paper is upon two workshops carried out in the summer of 2011 in the UK cities of Leeds and Norwich. The main purpose of these workshops was to explore how one of the visions could be mapped/adapted to their specific local circumstances and to develop pathways for achieving this vision, taking into account three alternative macro - storylines. The workshops aimed to attract relatively senior people from the local authorities in each area and representatives of stakeholder groups . The workshop size was between 10 - 15 people. The underlying aim of such exercises is to encourage city authorities and stakeholders to think in a more structured, systematic way about how the various potentially -conflicting issues concerning walking and cycling would play out in a long - term future, taking into account that the ‘external environment’ (e.g. the national economy) is highly unpredictable. The paper presents the results from the Leeds and Norwich workshops in terms of the local visions and pathways that they produced. Special attention is paid to results concerned with policies that directly facilitate walking, whilst recognising that a large number of factors (all urban transport modes, land use patterns, ‘society’) have impacts (direct or indirect) on walking. Various conclusions are presented, both with regard to transport policy and the methodology for constructing the visions/pathways and running the workshops.
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)