More Footprints, Less Carbon - Walk 21 NYC

This year, the international Walk 21 Conference was held in the dramatic City of New York. Hosted by New York University in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, this annual conference attracted several hundred participants from around the world, including over a hundred representatives from Canadian cities.

Adelle Beitz and Danbi Lee were among this crowd as representatives for Office for Urbanism. The conference provided an invaluable opportunity to be exposed to new ideas and best practices, and to meet leaders in the movement towards creating walkable cities.

After returning from the conference, Adelle and Danbi presented back to OU the key messages and themes that were learned. These included, the NYC DOT public space initiatives unrolled in August 2009, the High Line project, public space initiatives in Lower Manhattan, and new methods of measuring walkability in New York, London, and Seoul. It was also important to convey the impressions that were made upon them by being physically exposed to a city that was a laboratory of initiatives, through photos, videos, and various reading materials. They also highlighted that an emerging direction in city planning was in making direct connections between designing walkable environments and improvements in public health.

The next Walk 21 Conference will be held in The Hague, Netherlands.

View Danbi and Adelle's presentation here. (PDF, 16mb)

Posted on November 19, 2009