This particular study focuses on reestablishing the need for a plan and design that creates a more sustainable environment within certain... » More

This particular study focuses on reestablishing the need for a plan and design that creates a more sustainable environment within certain communities, in this case a city such as San Diego. Creating a walkable and sustainable San Diego includes incorporating the new idea of walk audits expressed through the organization Walk San Diego, helping to answer the questions: What are walk audits and how are they used to create the idea of a sustainable environment? Walk audits analyze a particular community assessing the walkability while creating and establishing solutions that complement a new design for walkability within the specific community. This project seeks to answer the question of what a walk audit is to allow society to acknowledge its significance and what the idea can bring to a particular community in need for walkability, moreover sustainability. After analyzing walk audits, then can community planning committee’s of many environments, see the importance in incorporating walk audits to better their community and surrounding communities also. The walk audit atmosphere also has to realize the bias involved with non-community involvement in walk audits. For without the cooperation and commitment of the community, maintaining this change will be impossible. Instead of educating society to become more walkable, in particular San Diego, planning committees’ need to discuss whether including the idea of changing the design of cities to fit the standards of a walkable city would be more valuable, creating walkable communities through designing from an engineering standpoint, i.e. incorporating walk audits and the design that comes through traffic engineering. Research methods included using Walk San Diego, a walkable community program/organization, case studies and methods for doing walk audits and also community interviews, to identify what walk audits are and how they are used. The case studies within San Diego included the community of Uptown, a walkable community established through walks audits showing the issues and funding problems that arise. The research project turns a specific idea of sustainability into an implementation of walkability for a goal to preserve nature and allow for a better environment.

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