Walking as a sustainable transport mode in cities

Abstract

Spatial mobility - a basic human need for movement influences the overall development of society. The present day offers many kinds of means of transport and ways how to move fast even at a long distance in the global world. Fascination by this previously unknown possibility - to travel all over the world in a relatively short time - often diverts attention from the most natural and also the healthiest modes of transport. Walking indeed is the first and basic transport mode, and when extreme cases such as the handicapped, injured and for other reasons walking - incapable people are left out, it is also the healthiest and most typical transport mode of human beings. Unfortunately, the benefit of walking is nowadays often disregarded and replaced with other means of transport - most frequently individual car traffic. Present - day cities have changed into car areas in which pedestrians are pushed out by danger, noise, and combustion gases produced by columns of stopping and starting vehicles. Parking cars obstruct pedestrians' view and movement. The liberty of walking in city centres can be regarded as an attribute of a free personality according to The Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms.