Ten thousand steps and more. A mention of excellence for municipalities such as Acigné and Cesson-Sévigné (Ille-et-Vilaine) or Gradignan (Gironde), at the top of those where it is good to walk in terms of safety, comfort, facilities…; a “very unfavorable” for others, such as Marseille or Aubervilliers (Seine-Saint-Denis). For the first time, a national barometer of walkable cities is made public, this Tuesday, September 7, with concrete criticisms and proposals to improve the daily life of pedestrians.
Physical and mental well-being, reduction in cardiovascular risk factors, prevention of osteoporosis, etc., ultimately with a reduction in mortality: the health benefits of walking have been amply demonstrated, including at low speed and from modest doses. The challenge now is to promote urban practices (particularly in terms of active mobility), by developing the environment. Pedestrian policies are based on studies on walkability, that is to say on the walking conditions in a given area. Beyond the approval for users, there could be a real impact on public health, according to the scant work available. “Canadians have shown, over a period of ten years, that the prevalence of obesity remains stable and that the incidence of diabetes decreases in neighborhoods with high walkability, compared to neighborhoods with less walkability,” underlined the nutritionist Jean-Michel Oppert in December 2019 in The world.
The inventory of walkable towns was carried out by the French Hiking Federation (FFRP) with two associations, 60 million pedestrians, and Rue de l’énergie, in partnership with the Agence de l’environnement et de la energy management (Ademe). The public consultation, on the same model as those carried out in 2017 and 2019 for cycling cities, took place during the winter of 2020-2021 (in the midst of the Covid-19 wave), and gathered 43,267 usable responses. The questionnaire consisted of around forty questions with a scoring system covering five themes: feelings about the daily life of a pedestrian, feeling of safety, walking comfort, opinion on the importance given to walking by the municipality, as well as on fittings and equipment.
Pedestrian defense
This is not a representative survey: most of the respondents were regular walkers, half of them were 55 and over, and a quarter were engaged in a walking or pedestrian defense association. But this survey is interesting because of its novel nature and its large number of participants. It made it possible to classify 200 municipalities of very variable size into seven categories (from A to G, excellent to very unfavorable). Paris, Marseille and Toulouse, cities which recorded the most responses, are respectively rated D, G and E.
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