Pedestrian Space social media and website were both founded during my last chapter (recent years) of living in Sweden.
My earliest memories of walkable urbanism, in my youth, were from annual summer family visits to the beautiful and vibrant southern Swedish city of Malmö, where we frequently moved around the city and suburbs by foot and bus- a departure from our car-dependent lifestyle back in southern California.
I photographed the above path a year ago while on a long exploratory evening walk in the suburbs of the central Swedish city of Örebro, where my husband, kids and I were living at the time. I have long been in admiration of the Swedish common-sense planning for connectivity between suburbs and city centers which only seems to improve over the years.
Like anywhere, there is nearly always room for improvement. But it makes sense for me that Pedestrian Space was established during my most recent chapter of living in Scandinavia as many Nordic cities offer great, very common-sense and long-established approaches and best planning practices to facilitate walkability and cycling not only within the city but also to outlying suburbs.
As I founded @pedestrianspace social media accounts (2020) & website (2021) those memories from my youth and also my introduction to a daily walkable urban lifestyle in my early 20’s in the Pacific Northwest, rose up like pieces of a puzzle, ready to be fit.
I began to connect the following:
•My lived experiences and memories of how wonderful and practical a truly walkable community is for health, quality of life and more
•My academic background in urban planning and passion for learning about various aspects of urbanism
•My decades-long love of photographing urban mobility and built environment
•The increasing pull I felt towards advocacy for walkability as a fundamental right of inhabitants and a foundational element for sustainable towns and cities.
I am currently based in a semi-rural village near the Kraków metropolitan area in southern Poland. I bring experiences from living in 5 countries & dozens of cities to pedestrianspace.org – experiences ranging from extremely car-dependent lifestyles to deeply walkable urbanism.
My academic background is in areas of spatial planning, built environment and psychology. But these lived experiences are, for me, some of the most practical and profound layers of truly understanding the effects of environment and mobility on well-being and the unparalleled benefits of living in a walkable community.
Walkability at Pedestrian Space is acknowledged as a truly multi-dimensional issue, connecting to issues of multigenerational access to the city and public spaces, green urbanism and access to parks, public transit, the relationship between movement and mental health and more.
My city adventures with my daughter on the weekend are one of the highlights of my week. We spend hours moving around and exploring the city by foot and public transit. We ride trams regularly but she still shows great joy and curiosity in the experience.
I really love raising my children with the ability to experience quality, affordable and accessible public transportation as a primary mode of mobility along with walking.
Such access should be a fundamental right in all cities. Equitable and democratic access to public transit alongside quality and extensive pedestrian and cycling space and infrastructure should be prioritized over the car-centric paradigm that is not sustainable for our species or the places we inhabit.
The Global Walkability Correspondents Network at Pedestrian Space was established in January 2022 to:
• cultivate solidarity among walkability advocates worldwide
• collectively & continuously center walkability as a primary mode of mobility to be prioritized
• provide coverage on the state of walkability in various communities
• continuously highlight walkability as key for sustainable cities & mobility paradigm shifts
The Network currently has Walkability Correspondents in 49 cities and 29 countries. This is my first time founding and facilitating a network and I’m really excited about its development and geographic diversity as well as the genuine passion and range of backgrounds, expertise and perspectives among the Correspondents.
We recently established working groups in the Network which truly activated connectivity, with multiple groups on a range of topics relating to community health and development, mobility and built environment.
Screenshot above from the 1st of 3 Global Walkability Correspondents Roundtables this weekend!
At this meeting, 12 cities and 9 countries were represented.
This weekend I am hosting three virtual Roundtables for the Global Walkability Correspondents Network! To all those present at the first meeting (above)- it was so wonderful to be present with you, to hear more about your backgrounds, to see you connecting with each other and sharing. I look forward to so much more!!
Screenshot from the 2nd of 3 Global Walkability Correspondents Roundtables this weekend!
At this meeting, 11 cities & 10 countries were represented.
Screenshot above from the 3rd of 3 Global Walkability Correspondents Roundtables this weekend!
At this meeting, 17 cities & 13 countries were represented.
A few recent snapshots from the city of Kraków, where I often spend my weekend moments, walking for hours enjoying the wonderful light rail transit.
For me, walking and walkability is more than just a primary mode of mobility. It is also my joy. Hours of walking on a Saturday and Sunday ‘fills my glass’ and rejuvenates me for the week ahead. It is my daily fitness, woven into the fabric of my routines and daily life. It is my go-to activity for when I need to sort something difficult out in my mind and heart or simply unleash restlessness.
I love walking alone and I love walking with others. Walking for me is both social as well as solo and contemplative.
When I visit a city, new or familiar, for the first time, one of the first things I want and need to do is drop my bags off and hit the pavement to get my bearings for a couple of hours, relating to the energy and space of the place through this movement before later relaxing.
Pedestrian Space is dedicated to centering walkability as absolutely essential for sustainable cities and the mobility paradigm shift. These lived experiences and relationships to walking and pedestrian movement as a primary mode of mobility are also central to this platform.
-Annika Lundkvist, Editor & Founder at Pedestrian Space
#walkableweekends