Second Dinesh Mohan Memorial Annual Lecture by Derlie Mateo-Babiano
About the author:
Derlie Mateo-Babiano is an Associate Professor in Urban Planning and Assistant Dean at the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning (ABP), the University of Melbourne, Australia.She is committed to fostering and embedding diversity and inclusion in the built environment discipline. She has led the development of ABP's Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan which aspires to contribute to the shaping of a more inclusive ABP community. Her commitment to gender diversity in the transport discipline has led her to co-convene the Women in Transport leadership (WiTL) knowledge network (www.witl.info). She has also advanced a significant body of knowledge on streets as places, active transport (walking and cycling), gender and transport, with theory and policy implications within the Australian and Asian setting. She aims to help students to become global citizens, enabling them to contribute to the shaping of a more just, inclusive and sustainable global community.
Abstract
Walkable places are locations that promote active lifestyles and positive health outcomes. Promoting more walkable places and encouraging walking as a mode of transport are strategies that governments, civil society and the private sector must support to achieve more inclusive cities and equitable communities. Yet these actors, particularly those who can influence how transport environments are shaped, are reluctant to support the transition towards more pedestrian-friendly environments due to the limited understanding of the diversity of pedestrian experience. In this lecture, I adopt Crenshaw's intersectional framework to explore the concept of equity within walking environments. The aim is to shed light on an important but neglected dimension of walkability, the diversity of pedestrian experience. I argue that the lived experience of pedestrians provides an essential dataset at the individual level (e.g., actors/stakeholders including policymakers, users, and operators) to guide walkability transitions at the street/neighbourhood level (planning and design), with important implications for policymaking and governance. First, I critically explore and introduce an intersectional equity framework to guide the development of a pedestrian experience tool. Second, I introduce the pedestrian experience tool as an approach to comprehending the diversity of pedestrian experience, including the 'barriers' and 'facilitators' to walking, and identify elements that encourage and discourage walkability at the street/neig bourhood level. The tool will help leadership better understand the diversity of experiences of pedestrians to support walkability and the shaping of walkable environments that leaves no one behind.
