Walking Into The Future of Urban Mobility
Feature Interview With Sustainable Urbanism Expert Annika Lundkvist
I’ve lived a car free lifestyle since 2012. Having lived in cities like Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, and San Diego, most of my nomadic wanderings are by foot, public transit, and Lyft rideshare.
Whether it be a trip to my local grocery store, a coffeehouse jaunt, or trip to a bookstore, I typically will determine my route, lace up my shoes, and start walking. Through these treks I have grown accustomed to safely navigating pedestrian crossings while sharing sidewalks with joggers, skateboarders, and scooters.
Given my love for this walkable lifestyle, I was delighted to discover the work of Warsaw, Poland based Annika Lundkvist and the exciting work she is doing around sustainable urbanism.
Her research focusing on walkability as a quality-of-life component, examines many dimensions of walkable communities, including access to quality and affordable public transportation, urban nature, spatial equity, and inclusive urban planning. In this, she is passionate about how all these intersecting issues affect individual well being, public health, and society.
Lundkvist’s approach involves collaborative efforts with various stakeholders across communities in an effort to capture best practices globally. As founder of pedestrianspace.org, she is actively engaged in curating visual media & narratives on mobility in daily life.
She is also the founder and co-facilitator of the Global Walkability Correspondents Network, where she values connecting and networking with individuals internationally who share a vision of healthy, vibrant communities.
Lundkvist is a fellow at The Schumacher Institute and a passionate photographer, often focusing her lens on scenes of urbanism, mobility and community spaces.
She is also co-founder of Urban Transit Lab, a participatory media, research and communications initiative on LinkedIn that focuses on sustainable mobility practices. It launched in March 2023.
In terms of her early life, Lundkvist says that she grew up in the suburbs of the U.S., “reliant on a car and being driven (in my youth),” noting:
“While this was the 'norm' for me I was, however, fascinated from an early age with my mom's area of upbringing in Harlem, New York.
She says that summer visits to her father's native Malmö in Sweden formed some of her earliest memories of appreciation around walkable communities and safe, quality, accessible public transportation. On those routine holidays to southern Sweden, she and her family would mainly move about by foot and public transit.
Lundkvist recalls from early in her youth being quietly thrilled and very satisfied by this. Years later she would understand this as 'walkability,’ a concept that, over the years, developed into a core value that fueled her preferred lifestyle.
She says that it wasn't until my early twenties that she actually lived a walkable urban lifestyle for the very first time.
“I had moved to Seattle for my first job out of college. I was able to walk and/or take the bus everywhere I needed to go. It was my Eureka moment. I also fell in love with urbanism during this chapter of my life. It was my first time living in a city. I was thrilled by the weekend farmers market that was held in the parking lot across from my apartment and the bounty of fresh vegetables I could bring home and that a short walk away was the nearest grocery store where I could stock up on other items.”
Lundkvist says that she would spend much of her free time out walking, photographing the architecture of the city, particularly its public spaces and sidewalks.
“I knew then that I wanted to, in some way, work with issues of the built environment, cities and urbanism.”
Ask to provide a brief orientation to to those who may be unfamiliar with the term “sustainable urbanism,” she had this to add:
“One of my favorite books has as its title 'Can a City be Sustainable? (published by The Worldwatch Institute). I think this is a very provocative as well as immensely interesting question in light of the fact that while cities are infamously known for their enormous consumption and energy demands, they are also centers of enormous creativity, innovation and adaptation potential. They are also the 'habitat' of longing for so many people (i.e. humans are increasingly choosing to live in urban environments).”
She believes that urbanism is one of the most critical challenges of our lifetime and learning how to reduce our ecological footprint while choosing an urban lifestyle requires adjustments in so many areas of lifestyle and community development.
“I believe that we all have a responsibility to actually learn at least a little about what this means -there is truly something for every resident of a city to learn about to become more acquainted with how issues of sustainable urbanism affect our lives as well as how our habits affect the sustainability of our communities. There are a wealth of texts as well as very accessible articles that explore the many dimensions of sustainable urbanism.”
By way of example, for those interested in learning about the inner workings of food and food production, she recommends looking at what sustainable food production for urban inhabitants means. In other words, what are the challenges of supply chains during times of crisis and how can that affect the availability of resources at the urban grocery stores that so many city inhabitants rely on for most, if not all of their food supply? She says to start by looking to see if urban agriculture projects, school gardens, community gardens exist in your city.
Lundkvist adds that while there are many expert definitions and explanations of sustainable urbanism, what’s increasingly most important to her are consistent and collective efforts to shape at least basic public awareness about various dimensions of sustainability and seeing these dimensions as manifest from regional to community to household level. This, she says, requires an all-hands-on-deck approach noting…
“We all need to be involved in the ever-developing project that is making our cities more sustainable - not only for future generations but for those living right now as well.”
While some may critique the concept of 'sustainability' as no longer. 'enough,’ Lundkvist believes that the drive for innovation and to create novel concepts often has people ditching perfectly common sense and desperately needed ideas in a search for the 'next and new'.
“We can focus on regenerative urbanism for example while also continuing to focus on sustainability. They are interdependent. Sustaining an increasingly urbanizing global population will require a lot of radical change. I think of the drastic changes we experienced during the recent pandemic and finding a middle ground. If we are incapable as a species of figuring out these changes ourselves, they will be forced upon us.”
Lundkvist says that when she looks back at her life, valuing walkability has been present from a very early age.
“Those summer family trips to Malmö that I mentioned earlier- little did I know that as a child the experiences of public transit and walking for daily needs during those trips would play such a foundational role in media advocacy and research I would do as an adult. But they have. They are, I would say, some of the foundational building blocks to my interest in walkability- that direct lived experience about how basic, practical as well as enjoyable the experience of a truly walkable community can be.”
In terms of her own personal walking practice she prefers to have walking woven into her daily life, commuting, errands and leisure time.
“Some days of the week I like to carve out for 'deep walking'- literally hours spent just walking. I find this to have a great effect on my sense of physical health, my mental health as well as act as a focusing effect for my energies. I am happier, healthier as well as better focused when walking is deeply embedded into my daily and weekly routines. The relationship you can cultivate with your local built environment, as a walker, is also incomparable.”
In terms of emerging trends around public transportation, transit oriented development, urban nature, and inclusive urban planning, she had this to add:
“Wow, that is a lot of terrain to cover and there are some really exciting emerging trends but it's also important to acknowledge that there is so much to be done. I would say I largely associate with and move in circles with people who are extremely keen on thinking about and working with these issues so I may have a very specific perspective.”
It’s here, she says, that she has to remind herself that in fact many (if not most) people are not thinking about issues of sustainable mobility and urbanism on a regular basis, if at all. This is why media advocacy is so important to her.
“Having founded pedestrianspace.org as an NGO (here in Poland) this summer will, I hope, help pave a path forward to do even more on a regional and even global scale, when it comes to awareness on these issues.”
There there is the issue of climate and environmental change that she took a moment to weigh in on
“The relationship between public health, the environment and climate change with the topics you mentioned is critical. Access to safe, affordable, quality public transportation is critical for public health, social inclusion, spatial equity, mobility justice and more…….
She continues
“Urban nature is another topic that is really central in my work on walkability. Issues such as thermal comfort and shaded paths to help mitigate urban heat and provide safe and comfortable walkability is really a basic and foundational element for inclusive urban planning and sustainable urbanism.”
She adds that while it’s really fantastic to see so many cities developing SUMP's (sustainable urban mobility plan), the reality is that in many regions of the world the trajectory is going in the opposite direction.
“I am really interested in and committed to constantly cultivating local and regional awareness with regards to these themes and keeping an eye out for best practices and barriers, as well as being part of the global discussion where international best practices can be shared as well.”
Lundkvist asserts that she is committed to engaging in rich and critical discussions about diverse solutions for various local contexts.
“We need to be constantly focusing on both bottom-up and top-down solutions. Cities and towns need healthy, expert governance as much as they need communities that are aware of these issues and also excited to play diverse community roles at local level.”
In closing, with a nod to “Great Books, Great Cities” and it’s mission of igniting a new world of community, connection, and belonging one book at a time, Lundkvist shared her thoughts on a few authors, thought-leaders and books that have impacted her thinking over the years.
“I've nearly always got a stack of several books I am reading and some definitely have left a great impact. Herbert Girardet's 'Creating Sustainable Cities' is an absolute favorite of mine that also led me to the Schumacher Institute, for which I later became a research fellow and am very grateful to be affiliated with. 'Car Sick: Solutions for our Car Addicted Culture' by Lynn Sloman is also a favorite. I'm currently reading 'The Ministry for the Future' by Kim Stanley Robinson which I can barely put down. It feels like a necessary as well as completely immersive read.”
Inspiring!