Walk21 is the international charity dedicated to supporting and promoting more walking to help make walking an enjoyable part of daily transport, recreation and health through effective policies, programmes and planning all over the world.
In September 2017 we delivered “WCT tourism placemaking” at Walk21 Calgary.
In many cities, the lack of urban identity affects how citizens perceive their surrounds. That can be detected by urban tourism, which selects destinations that can be visited on foot, destinations from which travellers return seeped in experience.
The link between town planning and tourism is the source of this city tourism-specific analysis of the pedestrian network: Walkability City Tool Tourism Placemaking (WCTtp). The tool compiles data on the factors that impact walkability in general and city walkability in particular. That enables us to:
– locate tourist flows in real-life cities
– balance the tourist load capacity in urban spaces
– improve the visitor’s tourist experience.
Those objectives define a need for a tool that can:
– optimise the city’s tourist resources
– design tourist industry-based strategies for raising GDP
– improve pedestrian infrastructure for locals and visitors
– favour sustainable tourism criteria
– map tourist routes and plan resources.
City managers drafting plans for action focused on tourism face many questions that are difficult to answer without objective data.
By modelling tourist flows in the urban web, we generate information on local travel that can help decongest crowded areas, promote infra-visited areas and define measures for improvement.
