The Walkable Neighborhood: A Literature Review

The past decade has seen a surge of interest in the walkable neighborhood, motivated by environmental,health, economic, and communitarian goals. We take stock of this literature by linking together thevarious strands of research in which the “walkable neighborhood” is a primary concern. We organize theliterature into three broad categories: measurement, criticism, and tests of the benefits of walkableneighborhoods. The latter category involves three primary claims. We find that claims about socialimpacts are the weakest in terms of research support, in part, because there continues to be a problem ofself-selection and an inability to assign causality.