Creating Walkable Cities
In today’s fast-paced world, the bustle of everyday life can often get in the way of sustainability and development. To mitigate this problem, urban designers and architects have been developing pedestrian-friendly cities. Walkable cities mean less cars on the road, which means less traffic congestion, less automobile accidents, and less pollution. Cornell researchers across the College of Engineering and the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning have recently launched Urbano, a software that helps urban designers simulate and assess their designs. To help designers make decisions based on the specific needs surrounding each city, the researchers also work on analyzing metrics and implementing algorithms based on these data. For example, to assess walkability, the researchers have developed an algorithm that computes the shortest path to various locations, as well as the rate at which these paths are used.
I thought this article was interesting because it presents a solution to a real-world problem and highlights the importance of networks in our daily lives. The cities can be represented by graphs, with popular amenities as nodes and walkable paths as edges. Braess’s Paradox can also come into play in the design of walkable cities. How would the addition of pedestrian-friendly paths affect the dynamics of the neighborhood? How will traffic be affected by a decrease in cars and increase in pedestrians? It is my hope that walkable cities will become a reality.