Do modern cities encourage or discourage walking of healthimpaired seniors?

Walking outdoors is essential for healthy ageing. Cities and especially 15-minute cities stimulate this walking by making facilities accessible on a short distance and by investing in sidewalks. Not much is known however about how effective different sidewalk improvements are in increasing the frequency and length of seniors’ walking, especially for people facing mo- bility impairments. Our paper provides novel insights by running a stated choice experiment, in which participants in the age of 65 to 85 repeatedly se- lect between walking routes that differ not only on sidewalk characteristics but also in walking time. The trade-off respondents make in the experiment is: am I willing to walk longer if the sidewalk is attractive. We vary the purpose of being outside (walk to the supermarket or a recreational stroll), and specify the walking route characteristics in terms of comfort and enjoy- ment. Using various model specifications, we find the probability of leaving home for a walk for mobility-impaired seniors to be around 60%, against 90% for a more healthy peer. Once outside, mobility-impaired older people walk only half as long as non-mobility impaired peers. We show that the most effective way to reduce this gap in willingness-to-walk is investing in benches. Benches along the route raise the probability of going outdoors for the mobility-impaired from 60% to 75% and increase the time spent walking by 8 minutes. Greenery along the route also strongly boosts the time spent walking. We illustrate how obtained insights can be used in practical urban design to improve the walkability of public spaces around senior homes.