5 Examples of “The Interesting Walk”

A colleague recently asked me to select a few photos of streets representing “The Interesting Walk.”

She wrote:

“Nothing interests people more than other people. Humans will avoid walks that do not provide a sense of human habitation, human effort, and human scale.”

In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs championed walking as the best way to experience and understand neighborhoods. She argued that walkable streets were essential to vibrant, safe, and connected communities.

Jeff Speck is a leading urban planner and author of Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time. His perspective is that an interesting walk comes from urban design that:

• Hides its parking lots: Keeping parking away from street edges is essential for both surface and structured lots.
• Avoids blank walls: The best place for a city’s arts budget is to create a mural program that gives interest to blank walls in public spaces.
• Provides many signs of human habitation: Doors and windows — eyes on the street — give the impression that one is likely to bump into other people.
• Avoids repetition: Many architects misunderstand urban projects as large architectural projects and feel the need to repeat the…