Listen to the episode:

You can find the shownotes through this link.

---

Are you interested in how the legal framework in Australia influences walking?

---

Our summary today works with the article titled An analysis of the legal framework influencing walking in Australia from 2022 by Tracy Nau, Adrian Bauman, William Bellew, Billie Giles-Corti, and Ben J Smith, published in the Public Health Research & Practice journal. Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how one potential urban mobility method, walking is influenced by legal frameworks. This article presents the shortcomings and opportunities for Australian legislation in encouraging walking.

[intro music]

Welcome to today’s What is The Future For Cities podcast and its Research episode; my name is Fanni, and today I will introduce a research paper by summarising it. The episode really is just a short summary of the original paper, and, in case it is interesting enough, I would encourage everyone to check out the whole paper. Stay tuned until because I will give you the 3 most important things and some questions which would be interesting to discuss.

[music]

Globally, more than one in four adults are not sufficiently active for health. In Australia, this ration is almost one in two. The lack of progress in this area will slow down chronic disease prevention efforts and limit potential co-benefits of physical activity. Walking offers a vital policy target for governments seeking to increase populate physical activity because it is a prevalent and easy access behaviour across social groups and can be incorporated into daily life such as recreation or transport.

Interactions between individual, social and environmental factors influence walking behaviours. Interventions targeting individuals, such as walking group programs can increase walking but can be resource-intensive and difficult to implement at scale. Built environment interventions such as increasing residential density and access to parks offer population reach and have been estimated to contribute almost 60% of the physical activity required to meet health recommendations. However, both types of interventions are needed to promote physical activity.

Statutory policy making can target both individuals and the built environment to encourage walking – like making walking cheaper or more economically beneficial. Setting design standards and establishing decision-making authorities to support cross-agency or government coordination can help in accomplishing this task. Whether legal interventions target the public or the built environment, their most significant potential for mass impact is changing default options that influence behavioural and environmental norms. In Australia, although the policies target physical activities, it is not known whether they have any effect on the outcomes. Recent research in Australia has indicated that more robust statutory mechanisms and legislative support may be needed to incentivise and ensure the delivery of healthy built environments. Even though the WHO has strong recommendations, there has been limited research to find how planning laws and regulations support or hinder walking.

Based on their review of legislative frameworks and regulations, the authors found several walking needs or environmental factors influencing walking decisions. These are basic to higher-order needs: accessibility, safety, convenience, comfort and enjoyment. A person deciding to walk will be less like to consider higher-order need if a more basic need is not satisfied.

Lawmaking for walking can occur at multiple levels, like state or territory parliament, executive, department and statutory authority. At the same time, detailed design considerations feature mostly in state or territory wide legislative frameworks. These vary in structure content and level of detail, but broadly seek to promote walkable environments by setting out objectives for different zones and aspects of development and accompanying criteria to achieve those objectives. The jurisdictions also have a combination of outcome based and rule-based standards to achieve the desired design objectives.

The revealed variability raises the uncertainty about the scope and strength of law for creating walkable environments at the national levels. The authors highlighted directions for future research to aid policy and decision-making better for walkability. They suggested longitudinal or cross-section analysis to map the critical dimensions of laws related to walking. With this, jurisdictions can be compared and improved learning from one another. Advocacy groups could also use such data for healthy planning policy and receive more support for better regulations

WHO identifies active environments and active systems as integral to a whole-of-systems approach for increasing population physical activity and prominently features recommendations for improving the walkability of built environments. Although much is known about the built environment design elements that promote walking, and tools have been developed to assess walkability, there is limited understanding about the statutory components of the system that direct and regulate changes to the built environment in Australia.

[music]

---

What was the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Do you have any follow up question? Let me know on Twitter at WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the transcripts and show notes are available! Additionally, I will highly appreciate if you consider subscribing to the podcast or on the website. I hope this was an interesting paper for you as well, and thanks for tuning in!

---

[music]

Finally, as the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

1. Walking offers a vital policy target for governments seeking to increase populate physical activity because it is a prevalent and easy access behaviour across social groups and can be incorporated into daily life such as recreation or transport.
2. Although much is known about the built environment design elements that promote walking, and tools have been developed to assess walkability, there is limited understanding about the statutory components of the system that direct and regulate changes to the built environment in Australia.
3. More studies are needed to help decision-makers and advocacy groups to fully understand and utilise walkability, like longitudinal or cross-section investigations across the different jurisdictions.

Additionally, it would be great to talk about the following questions:

1. Have you ever experienced any legal or regulatory barriers to walking in your city or community? How do they affect your urban walkability?
2. What do you think are the key factors that influence walking in your urban areas beyond legal frameworks?
3. Is walking a major transport method for you in your city? Why?
4. How would you advocate for walking and walking-friendly policies in your urban areas?

[outro music]

---