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If you hear a politician or commentator mention “walkability,” that person is probably a Democrat or a liberal.
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That’s a shame, because walkability should be a conservative concern. Specifically, conservatives ought to help parents have more kids and help kids have lower-tech childhoods with more freedom. Neighborhoods where kids can walk around are neighborhoods where families will flourish and civil society will blossom.
On the flipside, those who work on walkability ought to think more about children and parents. You could spend all day reading urbanism and walkability literature and come across a hundred mentions of commuting to work or walking to a cocktail bar without ever seeing the word “child.”
We need to fix these problems.
America has an epidemic of childhood anxiety rooted in a lack of freedom. Birth rates are collapsing, and parenthood seems more daunting. We desperately need a world where kids can be let loose in a neighborhood and told to come home for dinner. That requires more walkable places, which in turn requires a fuller and smarter discussion about walkability.
Freedom for kids, relief for parents
American children walk far less than they used to, largely because American parents give them far less freedom to roam. Less freedom and less walking means more scrolling, less exercise, and less socialization, leading to more anxiety and probably fewer babies.
Most American 11-year-olds are not allowed to leave their property without supervision, according to a recent poll by the Institute for Family Studies. Most 14-year-olds may not leave their street. Most 17-year-olds may not leave their neighborhood.
Forty percent of American high schoolers walked to school in 1969. By 2016, only about 10% walked, according to the Transportation Department.
These trends harm parents and children both.
When kids walk less, that often means parents drive more. Modern suburban parenting means hours and hours stuck in car hell: buckling and unbuckling the baby so you can pick up the toddler on the way to dropping off the oldest at her friend’s house.
Also, when every get-together needs to be scheduled, and when free-time isn’t spent wandering, kids end up less well-adjusted.
“A primary cause of the rise in mental disorders,” concluded a 2023 paper in the Journal of Pediatrics, “is a decline over decades in opportunities for children and teens to play, roam, and engage in other activities independent of direct oversight and control by adults.”
Parental fear is a major cause of decreased childhood mobility, but the built environment is surely a factor. At the very least, a more walkable neighborhood can be part of the solution.
The ‘official’ measure is dumb
“Want Fecundity in the Sheets? Give Us Walkability in the Streets.”
That was the title of one chapter in my 2024 book, Family Unfriendly, on the cultural forces arrayed against parents and kids. My argument: Parents will have more kids if they’re not forced to drive them around as much. More broadly, when childhood is more fun parents will enjoy it more — and maybe have more kids.
I haven’t proven that walkability yields fecundity, or even childhood flourishing. Admittedly, the famously walkable cities of Mediterranean Europe have shockingly low birthrates, and U.S. birthrates are higher in rural areas, where a car or truck is mandatory.
Lyman Stone of the Institute for Family Studies denies that walkability even affects children’s freedom to roam.
Stone relies on the “Walkability Index” published by the federal government. That’s an official measure, but it’s also an awful measure.
The index comes from the Environmental Protection Agency, which measures some concepts of “urbanism,” but doesn’t even try to measure the ease of walking.
The EPA lays out its methodology in a brief paper whose cover is illustrated with a photo of a D.C. intersection. The photo has almost everything: A Metro stop, a car, crosswalks, racial minorities, a woman with a cane, a man in a wheelchair. What you don’t see is any children or even one parent pushing a stroller.
Inside this paper, the words “child” and “parent” appear only once each, in a quotation from the AARP.
More importantly, playgrounds and parks go totally unmentioned.
These omissions reflect the poor methodology. The EPA calculates the walkability of every “block group” in America (which, in the suburbs and cities, is a handful of blocks) with four measures:
- “Intersection density”
- “Proximity to transit stops”
- “Employment Mix”
- “Employment and household mix”
In other words, smaller blocks and a grid design are rewarded along with bus stops and subway stations. Also, the EPA calls a neighborhood more walkable if homes are near businesses, and especially near a bunch of different kinds of businesses.
These factors are not uncorrelated with actual walkability, but they shouldn’t define walkability.
The EPA doesn’t care if there are sidewalks or walking trails in a neighborhood. Crossing a six-lane road with a 50-mph speed limit is just as “walkable” in the EPA’s methodology as crossing a small, 20-mph street with bumped-out curbs.
When talking about walkability, one needs to ask “walkable to what?” The EPA measures walkability to places of employment, ideally, places of many different types of employment. This isn’t merely a measure of can you walk to work? It also indirectly measures can you walk to the store, the restaurant, and the concert hall?
These are fine considerations, but they are too adult-centric. Kids mostly need to walk to school and the basketball court. A playground or park counts for nothing in the EPA’s measure. In fact, a park is a negative in the EPA’s calculus because it offers neither employment nor road intersections.
Also, kids mostly need to walk safely to their friends’ houses.
Studies have consistently found two factors affect safety for children walking: The volume of car traffic and the speed of car traffic. As one recent meta-study put it: “The two most common traffic variables that have a negative relationship with traffic safety for children, and thus a positive relationship with collisions involving children were high traffic speed and high traffic volume.”
When kids are less at risk from getting run over, parents give them more freedom, and they walk more: Slower and fewer cars yields more children walking.
Nevertheless, these factors are totally absent from the EPA’s Walkability Index
Trump should fix it
The Trump administration can fix this, and can make walkability great again.
The first step is moving this index from the EPA to Department of Transportation (currently headed by father of nine, Sean Duffy).
The second step is putting children and families first rather than last. The volume and speed of traffic should be the most heavily weighted factors, along with the presence of sidewalks and trails. Proximity and accessibility of schools and parks should be next. Finally, commerce and short blocks matter, so they should be included.
Also, the Transportation Department should actively work to make more places kid-walkable. DOT should steer state walkability initiatives towards considering families and kids first.
Any federal road spending should be made in the light of whether it makes a walkable place less walkable, especially for kids. Any federal spending for bike and pedestrian trails should also explicitly aim for kids’ safe passage around neighborhoods.
Two shifts of mindset are needed here: First, the people who think about walkability need to think about family and children before they think about workers or shoppers.
Second (and this may be a more difficult shift) conservatives need to start thinking about walkability, even when that means inconvenience for drivers.
Where people, especially children, would want to walk, cars should go slower and roads should have fewer lanes. This is a sacrifice for drivers.
Don’t think of this as a sacrifice for the sake of lycra-clad bicyclists. Instead, it’s for the sake of an 8-year-old walking to her friend’s house, a 12-year-old walking to Little League practice, and a few 14-year-olds wandering the neighborhood until the street lights come on.
