Public input has improved the walkability of Seattle’s Delridge and Beacon Hill neighborhoods and inspired new policies that support neighborhood participation across the city. The systems approach of Feet First and Active Seattle created a channel for residents to influence city priorities for funding and designing walkable communities. This approach lays a foundation for sustainable change.

Active Seattle — an Active Living by Design community partnership funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation — focuses on five neighborhoods whose populations have historically been left out of planning processes. Many residents in these communities (Delridge, Central District, Beacon Hill, Lake City, and North Aurora) are recent immigrants who face cultural and linguistic barriers, and up to 50% of the families in these neighborhoods live below the poverty line.

“Engaging neighbors, particularly pedestrians, was the first step in the project,” says Becca Deehr, Policy Director at Feet First. “We tried to involve as many people as possible, reaching out to the community through community associations, schools, and libraries.”

The team then guided the residents in a neighborhood assessment, which included determining neighborhood destinations. They used symbols to mark destinations such as participants’ homes, friends’ houses, places to eat, schools, playgrounds, and the routes — the trails — that pedestrians and cyclists followed.

Road maps for motorized travel don’t provide pedestrians with the information that determines the best walking routes. Are there hills? Stairs? Buckled or dead-end sidewalks? Are intersections safe for pedestrians? The pedestrian maps provide not only miles, but also the time it takes to walk a route. This is the kind of information Feet First gathered to create a walking map that would make sense for pedestrians.

Participants were also asked to dream about Delridge, to think about what they’d like their neighborhood to be like. What destinations would exist and what kinds of pathways would lead to these places? Would there be public spaces in which neighbors could come together? Could they eat fresh foods from community gardens? Would there be safe places to play? “Everyone was really encouraged to imagine a better space, and then we thought through ways to make that happen,” says Deehr.

The steering committee and the neighbors worked together to develop a trail network. They won a Rivers and Trails Technical Assistance grant from the National Park Service that helped fund mapping and GIS work. They were able to map trails that hadn’t been mapped previously and work with the community to set priorities for improvements.

To make the ideas about improving walkability real, Feet First and Active Seattle worked with local, city and state governments to improve the walking infrastructure and the policy changes needed to involve residents.  It wasn’t an easy process. Without policies or processes in place, community involvement in the planning process was almost impossible.

With large institutions, explains Deehr, “if there’s not a code then it can’t happen.” And there was no code that allowed for neighborhood input. Feet First and Active Seattle advocated for neighborhood participation in the planning process — and the city listened. Processes and codes for community participation are now in place, and this model is being used in walkability projects in other neighborhoods.

The team’s current work includes integrating the neighborhood maps with the city’s trail system. The neighborhood maps will be insets of the trail maps found on kiosks along pathways. An exciting component of the kiosks in these neighborhoods is the inclusion of artwork by area youth.  All this has been made possible by policy revisions that allow for community participation in planning and decision making.

The pedestrians in these Seattle neighborhoods, with the help of Feet First and Active Seattle, are building a model that supports individual and community health — across the city.

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