Sam Schwartz Engineering and America Walks release Steps to a Walkable Community

NEW YORK – Sam Schwartz Engineering, the transportation engineering consulting firm, and America Walks, the national pedestrian advocacy organization, are proud to announce the launch of Steps to a Walkable Community: A Guide for Citizens, Planners, and Engineers. This book and downloadable PDF is a collection of innovative tactics that have successfully improved and encouraged walking in communities around the country. This resource serves as the basis for a series of webinars, phone discussion groups, trainings, and walking campaign walkshops™ also launching this month.

Creating a pedestrian-friendly community often means tackling the problem from several different angles at the same time. To address that reality, Steps to a Walkable Community features tactics that tackle those challenges from multiple approaches, such as advocacy, land use, policy, design and engineering, encouragement, and enforcement. The guide is designed to be practical: Benefits of walking are distilled into two-page fact sheets that readers can use as talking points. Tactics are grouped by their fields of discipline and described in a standardized, easy-to-read format under the following headings: definition, benefits, considerations, appropriate contexts, guidance, professional consensus, examples, and case study (where needed).

“I now see the future of cities lies in their previously dominant transport mode—walking,” says Sam Schwartz, president and CEO of Sam Schwartz Engineering. “Steps to a Walkable Community will help engineers, planners, and citizens support this grand movement.”

“This guide, Steps to a Walkable Community, provides readers with both time-tested and innovative pro-walking tactics that are realistic and achievable,” says Scott Bricker, executive director of America Walks. “We aim for this resource to be the first stop in shopping for exciting walking projects and campaigns. Dive in and learn about these exciting initiatives.”

Steps to a Walkable Community is available for wide distribution in multiple formats:

Download a free PDF from samschwartz.com and americawalks.org/walksteps.

Order a $40 hardcopy by emailing info@walksteps.org.

Visit WalkSteps.org, launching in October, where the tactics within Steps to a Walkable Community will be integrated with other emerging ideas Steps to a Walkable Community is a continuation of work that began in November 2011, when America Walks gathered fifty leaders to formulate a strategy to assist state and local efforts to improve walkability. One key outcome was to develop a guide of innovative and effective pro-walking strategies. Sam Schwartz Engineering (SSE) and America Walks entered into a partnership to create this guide and strengthen a growing pedestrian movement. Steps to a Walkable Community was principally authored by Laura MacNeil, an urban planner at Sam Schwartz Engineering.

The Steps to a Walkable Community guide will be the basis for America Walks’ Walking Action Network program series to bring these innovative tactics to communities around the country. Funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Walking Action Network launches September 13 in Long Beach, Calif.