Smart Growth advocates sustainable development proponents, and New Urbanists seem to agree that urban areas ought to strive for greater pedestrian access. There ought to be a greater link, planners say, between where people live and work and where they get the goods and services they require for a high quality of life. Yet access between where people live, work, shop and carry out other daily activities is not formally evaluated in the context of local planning practice. This paper offers an empirical and methodological contribution to such an evaluation. It answers the question: since increasing pedestrian access to goods and services is a major objective of the current call for compact, walkable, pedestrian-oriented urban environments, how walkable are our urban environments? The case study presents one example evaluation of a city often associated with policies that seek to create more walkable, pedestrian-oriented environments. The goal of the study, then, is to demonstrate how access can be given a more prominent role in planning practice. Despite the importance of pedestrian accessibility, the analysis of urban spatial pattern in terms of pedestrian access is hardly a standard protocol of local planning departments in the US. A case in point is the city of Portland, Oregon, used in this paper, which does not evaluate pedestrian access in its regular planning activities. For example, the city's Parks and Recreation Department recently completed an extensive survey and 'vision plan' for its parks (Portland Parks and Recreation, 2001). This impressive document includes detailed analyses of land holdings, recreation facilities, programme offerings, and funding. But the plan does not analyse the degree to which neighbourhood residents are able to walk to neighbourhood parks, other than by an account of the total number of park acres that exist in different subdistricts of the city.
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