Ladner rated high in Metro Vancouver’s latest Walkability Index.
A staff report to the regional district’s board notes the review, part of the region’s ongoing Neighbourhood Built Environment and Walkability Surface analysis, enables Metro Vancouver and its members to better understand how the built environment and walkability currently varies across municipalities and neighbourhoods, and how it is changing over time.
The resource is to also supporting land use and transportation decision-making.
Greater walkability is associated with improved traffic flow, reduced air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, improved physical and mental health outcomes and greater community well-being, the report notes.
The key findings of the 2021 Walkability Index include the most walkable areas in the region are aligned with Metro Vancouver’s Urban Centres and Frequent Transit Development Areas (FTDAs), as set out in Metro 2050.
The City of Surrey, in conjunction with the City of Delta, is planning to look at an area along the Scott Road corridor as a future FTDA.
The Index also notes that greater walkability is attributed mostly to increased net residential density and/or land use mix in Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster, the North Shore, western parts of Coquitlam and northwestern parts of Surrey.
In other areas, greater walkability is associated with increased intersection and/or net residential density.
The report explains that intersection density is a measure of street connectivity, while sidewalk continuity is the presence and completeness of the sidewalk network by comparing the total length of sidewalks to the total length of roads.
The report notes greater walkability that was mainly associated with increased intersection density and/or net residential density includes Ladner, among other areas.
The report also notes “hotspots” in sidewalk continuity includes Ladner, as well as Surrey’s City Centre, the Guildford, Newton, Fleetwood and Cloverdale neighbourhoods, Coquitlam City Centre and surrounding neighbourhoods, and the city centres of Langley City, Pitt Meadows and Maple Ridge.
The latest map highlighting several areas that had the most improved levels of walkability in 2021 includes, among others, Vancouver’s Broadway Corridor, Surrey City Centre, but also Ladner and Beach Grove in Delta.
The Metro report notes that less walkable areas could benefit from actions taken by local governments to improve the variables that support walking, such as planning for more compact urban environments, including apartments, multiplexes and other greater density dwelling structure types to increase net residential density.
Other identified improvements include increasing commercial space via additional floors and/or enabling more areas to serve a commercial use, and incorporating retail, entertainment, food, civic, office and green spaces into residential areas for greater diversity of land uses.
Other suggestions include designing smaller blocks to increase intersection density and including sidewalks in new developments and constructing new ones in existing neighbourhoods that have gaps.
The Walkability Index was developed by the Health and Community Design Lab in the University of BC’s School of Population and Public Health, under the direction of Dr. Lawrence Frank.
