Walkability Makeover for Suburbia: Retrofitting Calgary’s Suburbs, an Economic Evaluation ( breakout presentation )

Background Suburbia is characterized by low density, single family residential, auto-oriented design, a mostly homogeneous land use mix and overall low quality public realm. In Calgary, Canada most of the population growth continues to happen in the suburbs and while new guidelines are in place to make those more walkable a makeover of the existing neighbourhoods is a formidable exercise. Aim Our two main research questions were what would it take and how much would it cost to give suburbia a walkability makeover? We have critically analyzed walkability and neighbourhood form in Calgary. We gathered information from 2200 respondents and analyzed 30 neighbourhoods in detail. The project included an economic evaluation of the cost of retrofitting neighbourhoods to increase their degree of walkability using an array of redevelopment measures. We analyzed the cost associated with the implementation of those measures and evaluated the degree of change in walkability for each of the study neighbourhoods. Method Our methodology consisted of: A line-buffer network analysis of the potential walkshed for each one of the 2200 respondents; A detailed morphological analysis for each of the 30 neighbourhoods; A series of design improvements to increase walkability in each neighbourhood; An economic evaluation of the cost involved in the implementation of such strategies, and; A reassessment of the walkshed of the respondents using the new design improvements and evaluated the results Results/Conclusions Three types of neighbourhoods were identified based on their block pattern: grid, warped grid and curvilinear. Of the three types of neighbourhoods, the grid block pattern proved to be the one more supportive of walkability and where residents drove the least, while the curvilinear block pattern produced smaller walksheds. It was also found that walksheds in curvilinear and warped grid neighbourhoods lack destinations and therefore required the use of a vehicle to access services, while grid neighbourhoods had within their walksheds multiple destinations where people could walk to. Our economic evaluation found that the curvilinear neighbourhoods were significantly more costly to retrofit that the other two types but that walkability could be significantly increase with a series of retrofit measures.