Can a Map Rekindle London’s Love of Walking?
By charting the city’s most walkable corridors, the Footways project invites residents to get around by foot — and demand better pedestrian infrastructure.
Footways, a new walking map of London, launched between Covid-19 lockdowns in September 2020 and sold out rapidly.
Photographer: Paul J. Cochrane/Footways
What a difference a few paces can make. One moment we are shouting over the roar of four lanes of traffic and dodging other pedestrians outside Mile End tube station. The next we are on a quiet neighborhood street, gazing at rows of large, established trees against a bright blue autumn sky.
I’m on a walk of discovery with Emma Griffin, one of the founders of Footways, a project that traces hundreds of kilometers of walking routes between popular places of interest across London. Like a Waze for walkers, Footways directs users to the most pedestrian-friendly paths in the city. Their first colorful printed map was released in September 2020, in between Covid-19 lockdowns, and quickly flew off bookshop shelves. The online version, currently on Google Maps, has been viewed nearly 800,000 times and is gradually being updated and expanded.