Improving Walkability in the City: Urban and Personal Comfort and the Need for Cultural Shifts

Abstract The contribution reflects upon the cultural and behavioural framework needed to promote active urban mobility. The thesis is that along with active mobil- ity policies and projects, people need a different sensitivity towards walking in the city. In a highly car-dependent society, public administrations should improve both the material conditions for walking and the cultural awareness of its advantages to change the habits, time organisation, and daily practices necessary. To do that, a renewed centrality of Bernardo Secchi’s concept of (urban) “comfort” is crucial. It can help restore the individual and social meaning of urban walking beyond its functional dimension. The walking time as a measurement unit, introduced by the recent discourses on the 15-minute city, is not abstract but is linked to the experi- ence. This change, from abstraction to experience, calls for more attention to the qualitative dimension of movement so difficult to include in mobility projects and policies. It means considering the well-being during walking (urban comfort) and the one that walking implies and produces (personal comfort) as an element of the design activity. It became even more relevant if we consider the perspective of some fragile categories such as children or gender perspectives in walking. Starting from these arguments and quoting the international Urban95 and Italian Her Walk initia- tives, the chapter proposes elements to set the urban and personal comfort condi- tions necessary for active mobility policies in the light of the Italian context.