Walking is a basic need of the human being. Walking, however, is experienced differently by different people. The perceived quality of the walking infrastructure has a direct impact on the choice of traffic mode, if you rather decide for walking or other means of transport. In the Viennese study “Gehen in der Donaustadt” (walking in the 22nd district of Vienna called “Donaustadt”) quality aspects of walking were evaluated in four parts of the Viennese outlying district Donaustadt from the user‘s perspective. The study was carried out by FACTUM Chaloupka & Risser OHG in 2007 on behalf of the Municipality of Vienna (department 18: urban planning and development). The central issue of the project was the question of what kind of aspects promote walking and of what kind of aspects prevent people from walking. The results have shown that people like to walk. Walking is associated with positive feelings. Donaustadt is the biggest district of Vienna. In comparison with the inner city pedestrians have more space to move around. In two of the four investigation areas streets are still places where people not only walk, cycle or drive, but where streets are whereabouts to communicate with each other. Problems connected with walking are of infrastructural character (e.g. missing pavements, bad lightening at night time) or they are caused by bad traffic organisation (e.g. long waiting times at traffic lights, short green intervals for pedestrians at crossings). Some deficiencies result from a lack of social responsibility of each citizen (e.g. not respecting speed limits, parked cars or dog droppings on pavements). Suggestions for improvements refer to soft and hard policy measures (e.g. partly deconstruction of roads, awareness campaigns for walking). (Author/publisher) This publication may be accessed by Internet users at: http://www.ictct.org/workshop.php?workshop_nr=26
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