Walking and cycling, the least polluting mode of urban transport, is not directly mentioned anywhere in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Pedestrianization and safer street designs are growing in popularity, though, as they improve health and traffic safety, and decrease traffic congestion.
Most people that walk and cycle do it out of necessity. 30 to 40 percent of all trips made in Latin American cities, for example, are made by bike or foot. Global policy is now slowly realizing that incentivizing walking and cycling can yield major benefits. The New Urban Agenda at Habitat III summit last year even mentioned it 10 times, a ten-fold increase in comparison to previous iterations. Goal 3 and 11 of the SDGs could be re-analyzed to shift global policy as well.
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