Creating Places Where We Love to Live

January 22, 2024

During my 20-year career at EPA, my work has consistently been motivated by the desire to create more convenient, safe, and walkable communities. Having grown up seven miles outside of a small town, it might seem surprising that I am such a believer in the value of walkable communities. But as I grew older, I noticed more and more the stark differences between urban neighborhoods that felt dangerous for pedestrians and those built with pedestrians in mind. Since then, I’ve seen firsthand the benefits of walkable communities on quality of life, public health, and the environment.

Streets and intersections that were primarily built for moving cars often do not facilitate the safe movement of people. When we pay attention to designing and building safe, walkable streets, we create neighborhoods that add to the quality of life and economic vitality of cities and towns; most importantly, we create places where people want to be. For example, in my local community, I personally have seen outdated suburban retail areas with large, underutilized parking lots transform into vibrant and accessible places with restaurants, shops, and housing all located within walking distance of each other. These kinds of walkable places enable people to stay active, meet their neighbors, and spend money on local businesses.

Given the many benefits, it is surprising how many subtle barriers still prevent us from building more walkable neighborhoods. Local development approval rules often limit what kind of destinations can be built into our neighborhoods, causing homes, stores and offices to be located far apart. State and local design guidelines may often recommend dimensions for lane widths and intersections that are more oriented toward moving cars quickly at the expense of pedestrian safety. Decades of urban policies have encoded a DNA into community design that is not supportive of safe and convenient walking as a way to get around.

Whether people want to live in a condo or a single-family home, they broadly value walkability. In a recent survey by the National Association of Realtors, 79% of respondents indicated that being within an easy walk of places such as shops and parks is very/somewhat important, and 78% of those indicated that they would be willing to pay more to live in a walkable community. Recent research from Smart Growth America also reveals that there is a greater demand for walkable neighborhoods than supply.  As a result, working class and low-income families are often shut out of the walkable communities that do exist in the United States.

When we pay attention to designing and building safe, walkable streets, we create neighborhoods that add to the quality of life and economic vitality of cities and towns; most importantly, we create places where people want to be.

In EPA’s Office of Community Revitalization, we work collaboratively with communities to overcome these barriers. Our Greening America’s Communities program has enabled dozens of cities around the country to develop specific visions for more vibrant, resilient, and walkable places within their communities. Our efforts have helped communities redesign streets to serve all modes of transportation as well as address other critical roles, such as managing stormwater runoff and mitigating urban heat island effects. It has been an honor to support EPA’s work creating solutions to these challenges.

At the beginning of my EPA career, I worked on a team that helped develop a guidebook for walkable urban street standards in collaboration with the Institute of Transportation Engineers, the Federal Highway Administration, the Congress for the New Urbanism, and others. Since then, these model standards, and the work of organizations such as the National Association of City Transportation Officials, have facilitated efforts by many cities and several state Departments of Transportation to adopt their own more modern flexible street design guidelines. There has also been a recent national effort, as described by the Federal Highway Administration, to update national design guidelines that shape state and local standards.

Over the last 20 years I have seen important progress, but much more needs to be done to address the barriers many communities still face to improve walkability and create better environmental outcomes. My personal experience and training as an urban planner continue to inform my work. At the local scale, investing in community engagement and assisting with technical challenges are both needed. Some of the work can be highly technical, but communities also need strategies to help develop a shared vision to tackle our public health, air quality and climate change challenges.

This shared community vision is key as we move toward more healthy, sustainable, and convenient places—places where we love to live.

About the Author

John V. Thomas
Senior Advisor
Office of Community Revitalization

John Thomas coordinates several collaborative efforts with federal agencies that focus on community based strategies to promote more sustainable and equitable places. These efforts include collaborations with the Department of Transportation, Department of Energy, and the General Services Administration. Additionally, John leads the Office of Community Revitalization’s work supporting data tools that help quantify the role of location efficiency on environmental outcomes.