This semester at SLU, an urbanist club is encouraging students to mobilize against a proposed development that would turn plans for a mixed-use, walkable district near the university into a “tech district.” This area would be designed to foster startups and research institutions, alongside major tech companies, to cultivate innovation and construct a large AI data center.
The urbanist club, known as SLU On the Move, has long advocated for mixed-use zoning — a system that allows for multiple uses of a single block. Residential spaces mixed with shopping and commercial districts in these zones result in more compact, less car-dependent communities and expanded public transit.
SLU On the Move has collaborated with the Saint Louis Midtown Redevelopment Organization to increase awareness of these issues and push for more mixed-use developments in the area on and around campus. They have also worked to give students reduced cost access to the city’s transit passes.
But walkability matters just as much — if not more — for the St. Louis community beyond campus’s borders. The college is embedded in a real, historic neighborhood where long-term residents live, work and raise families.
When the area surrounding a campus is designed for pedestrians, rather than cars, the benefits extend to everyone, not just temporary student residents.
Walkable neighborhoods improve public health. Research shows that people living in walkable areas take significantly more steps each day, increasing physical activity without requiring access to gyms, safe recreational facilities or extra free time, resources that are not equitably available across populations and income levels.
A Stanford study found that moving to a more walkable neighborhood increases daily activity by over 1,000 steps on average, a change tied to reduced risks of chronic illness and other health problems. In this way, walkability serves as a low-cost intervention to address health disparities due to systemic inequalities.
Safety is another critical equity issue linked with walkability. Communities built primarily for cars tend to expose pedestrians to greater risks of traffic injury and even death. The pedestrians who face the highest risk are often low-income residents, the elderly, children and people with disabilities.
Walkability initiatives can increase safety for all community members, even for those who drive or use public transportation, by reducing conflict between cars and pedestrians.
These initiatives, like protected sidewalks and bike lanes, improved street lighting and traffic calming, an engineering technique that constructs roads that “trick” drivers into lowering their speed without noticing, are often low-cost, minimally disruptive and high impact.
Community building and social cohesion are other, more long-term benefits to walkable neighborhoods. When areas are pedestrianized, everyday interactions increase, building trust and familiarity among residents. Spending time in shared public spaces, recognizing local business owners and genuinely connecting with your neighbors increases the strength of social networks and fosters higher social capital.
This is especially important in neighborhoods that have been impacted by disinvestment and fragmentation, which often impact the neighborhoods outside of college borders, where many residents never asked for the campus to be built in the first place. One local example of this is the once-thriving Mill Creek neighborhood, which existed before SLU expanded its campus into the community, displacing its members and destroying their home.
The benefits of public health, safety and community only scratch the surface of what walkability can do for city streets and the people who inhabit them. If we want to be good stewards of our community and leave places better than we found them, then, as college residents, we have a duty to advocate for the long-term members of our community and expand the walkable conveniences of a college campus beyond SLU’s boundaries.