Guest: Anna König Jerlmyr, Former Mayor of Stockholm

Key Takeaways

• Movement is a basic determinant of human health that city design can either support or suppress.
• The 7000-step city is a design concept that makes movement the default choice in everyday life choices.

Summary

1. Urban form and built environment shape physical and mental health:
   • • Walking is not just about sidewalks, but also about comfort, safety, mixed use, shade, active frontages, places to pause, and public transport integration.
     • Hidden stairs, fast elevators, car-first streets, blank walls, lack of benches, and poor shade make walking seem secondary.
     • Walking, nature, social contact and exploration are factors impacting emotional and social well-being and happiness.
2. Investment in walkability and greening must not stay concentrated in already advantaged areas but instead be inclusive and equitable.
3. Small interventions such as benches, stairs, crossings, school-yard improvements, parks and street redesign can all extend healthy years.
4. Copenhagen, Paris, Bogota, and Singapore are all best-case examples that designed cities around people’s everyday rhythm and capacity to enable walking as a lifestyle choice.

How can Cities apply these learnings?

1. Strengthen mixed-use neighborhood planning so that people have reasons to walk.
2. Prioritize neighborhood-scale interventions in places where inactivity, loneliness, heat exposure, and poor access are most severe.
3. Connect parks and green corridors into a citywide walking network.
4. Integrate walking into public transport planning so that the first and last parts of a journey are designed as part of the system.

Ideas for future research

1. How to measure the combined effect of walkability on health, loneliness, and social participation?
2. How do bench spacing, shade, and resting opportunities affect mobility for older adults?