Between June and November 2002 over 700 people attended 11 seminars, held all over England, to hear about and discuss good practice in promoting walking. Each seminar included plenary presentations and two case studies. The main purpose of this publication is to present the good practice case studies in a way which is informative, helpful and, it is hoped, interesting to policy makers, practitioners and campaigners. There are many different aspects to the promotion of walking and the improvement of the pedestrian environment. Firstly, there are a wide variety of reasons for wanting to promote and encourage walking, often connected with other goals. These goals include local regeneration, health improvement, traffic reduction, promoting the use of public transport, community development and protection of rural amenities. These goals link to different planning processes and funding opportunities. It can be seen that walking policy has links to, and an important role to play in, a wide range of policy areas. Then there is the practical aspect of how to go about improving the walking environment. There are different ways of assessing the walking environment to decide what improvements should be made. There is often a need to consult with communities to discover their needs; communities may also act as the instigators of walking improvements. There are different elements to the design and maintenance of high quality pedestrian infrastructure. And there may be the possibility of using road charging as a means of improving conditions for pedestrians. The case studies are arranged in sections under fifteen different aspects of walking policy. Under each aspect are one or more case studies. In this way the reader should be able quickly to find the case studies which are of most interest to her/him. (Author/publisher)
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