Contributed by Andrea Cueny
View her blog here.
After evaluating applicant communities in several categories related to walking — including safety, mobility, access, and comfort — thePedestrian and Bicycle Information Center(PBIC) last week announced the selection of 11 Walk Friendly Communities across the U.S. They are ranked in categories of achievement, as follows:
Platinum Level
Gold Level
Silver Level
Bronze Level
Eight additional communities received honorable mention recognition.
Walk Friendly Communities is a new, national recognition program developed to encourage towns and cities across the U.S. to place a high priority on supporting safer walking environments. Regular readers know that I write a lot about walkability, because it expresses so many things we look for in sustainable places: health and fitness, a richness of destinations within walking distance, street connectivity, sidewalks, even a sense of community and place. A neighborhood or community whose residents, workers, and visitors find it useful, convenient, safe, and pleasant to walk, and do so regularly, is likely to be environmentally friendly in other ways as well.
Please click here to see the entire story about Walk-Friendly cities in the U.S. from www.grist.org.