An extensive body of work from the urban planning, health, and other disciplines has documented the importance of walking to urban sustainability from health, safety, security, environmental and other perspectives. These studies come mainly from countries in North America and Europe, where the majority of the population relies on cars for transportation. Notwithstanding, in many countries in the Global South, walking remains a majority transport mode, while cars increasingly dominate the urban streetscape, but are accessible only to a minority of the population. Chile provides fertile terrain for studying this phenomenon. This article reviews current practice and recent research of walking in Chile, in light of international findings regarding walkability, equity and urban sustainability. To elaborate an overview of the depth and breadth of walking in Chile, an interdisciplinary team conducted a literature review, examined relevant case study material from experience from Chile and in particular from Santiago, and triangulated this mainly qualitative data with results from the origin-destination survey applied in Chile’s main cities, Chilean traffic safety data) and results from official transport reports of other Latin American cities [Tirachini, A. (2019). South America: The challenge of transition. In J. Stanley & D. Hensher (Eds.), A research agenda for transport policy. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing]. Findings show that despite priority public investments that have largely prioritised infrastructure for cars, walking in Chile has remained as the majority transport mode up until today, especially for lower-middle income groups, and particularly for care-related tasks performed mainly by women. In this sense, walking in Chile has proven remarkably persistent. The importance of walking as the main transport mode, against the odds, reflects economic, cultural, and urban form determinants, which are explored in this article. Furthermore, a recent upsurge in public interest and community design initiatives to improve walking, particularly the generation of a Chilean approach to “complete streets” has emerged, opening up opportunities to challenge Chile’s version of automobility in favour of more equitable, active and public transportation modes. There is, therefore, in Chile an opportunity to prioritise the walking mode, improve infrastructure for walkers and build from preserving current high pedestrian modal shares, rather than having to reverse widespread car use, as occurs in many countries in Europe and North America. This potential is highly relevant as these conditions are similar to those in other Latin American cities and, potentially, other cities elsewhere in the Global South.

Promotion of healthy cities has prompted urban planners and designers to build new conceptual frameworks to improve the design of public spaces, in which mental well-being emerges as a fundamental concept. Mental well-being is related to spatial design, with increasing attention being paid to the built environment as an important predictor of mental well-being. The objective of this article is to advance and contribute new knowledge about the characteristics of the built environment and its potential benefits for mental well-being. A meta-analysis is carried out on various empirical and theoretical approaches from the literature. Using a WOS database as a case study, a methodology based on a bibliometric analysis is proposed to examine which elements of the built environment impact mental well-being in research between 1975 and 2020, using the HistCites and VOSviewer tools. The results show that there are six thematic axes related to the built environment that would favor greater mental well-being in public spaces: walkability, density, spatial design, environmental noise, green areas and social interaction. The six thematic axes are critically analyzed and integrated into a conceptual framework to address the impacts of the built environment on mental well-being in the planning of cities. It concludes with a discussion on the implications of these concepts for urban public policy and the promotion of healthier and more sustainable and walkable environments in Latin American cities.

A distinctive feature of downtown Santiago is its three-layered pedestrian network, consisting of streets, pedestrian zones and commercial galleries. This research shows that an important part of the vitality of downtown Santiago is because of its physical and configurational structure of streets, pedestrian zones and commercial galleries. This three-layered pedestrian network has been able to introduce a progressive differentiation of pedestrian flows into the urban block, thereby allowing for lower rents and the diversification of retail, which in turn facilitates the social diversity of service providers and users in the historic centre of Santiago.

Caminar es un modo de transporte sustentable y saludable, que debería ser promovido mediante la planificación y el diseño urbano. En este contexto, la presente investigación tiene como objetivo identificar los elementos del paisaje urbano que, desde la percepción del caminante, facilitan la caminata y, en contraste, los elementos que la inhiben, dentro de seis barrios pericentrales del Gran Santiago. Con este fin, se realizaron 120 walking interviews (entrevistas caminando in situ) con residentes durante septiembre, octubre y noviembre de 2018, permitiendo un detallado registro de la percepción auto-declarada de los peatones sobre sus entornos de movilidad peatonal. Los resultados muestran que elementos que promueven la caminata son la presencia de veredas anchas, árboles y uso de suelo mixto. En contraste, elementos que inhiben la caminata son veredas angostas y en mal estado, los cruces y, en especial, el tráfico motorizado y el ruido vehicular. Finalmente, en base a los resultados, se proponen recomendaciones para una planificación y un diseño de calles que promuevan la caminata.