Reflections from the 2025 Walk21 Tirana conference by our Head of Insight, Steve Rose
Dr William Bird, CEO of Intelligent Health and I had the pleasure of contributing to the Walk21 Conference in Tirana. It brought together city leaders, researchers and practitioners from across the world, all exploring how walking shapes healthier, fairer and more sustainable communities.
Over three days, it was clear that walking is now central to conversations about the future of cities — not just as a means of getting around, but as a foundation for connection, health and civic life.
Exploring how walking shapes healthier, fairer and more sustainable communities
A City in Transition
Tirana provided a fitting backdrop. Albania’s capital feels like a city in transition — youthful and energetic, but still negotiating its past. The conference venue, The Pyramid, captured this story perfectly. Built in the 1980s as a monument to communist dictator Enver Hoxha, it has been reborn as the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies, a space for people to learn digital and creative skills. Its past is not immediately visible; you have to look for it. That subtle interplay between remembering and moving on mirrored the wider tone of the conference — walking as an act of transformation, linking history to renewal.
Between Systems and Streets
One of the strongest threads through the conference was the tension — and potential — between policy-led and community-led approaches. Walking is increasingly recognised in transport and health policy, but the real test lies in how it connects with lived experience on the ground.
The Nós da Escola project from Brazil exemplified the community side of this balance. It trains pupils, teachers and residents to redesign the routes around schools, using tactical urbanism to make walking safer and more sociable. By reframing schools as ‘urban nodes’, it turns everyday journeys into exercises in citizenship and collaboration.
From Austria, the geht-doch.wien team shared a creative form of tactical urbanism that blurs the line between activism and art. Through small, performative interventions — from Shoes of Memory, installations that slow traffic and provoke reflection, to Gehsteig-Demos, playful reclaiming of pavements — they illustrated how even modest acts can shift public perception and policy priorities. Their work reminded us that culture change often precedes policy change: people must first see walking differently before systems can support it.
Culture change often precedes policy change
In Rotterdam, designer Isabel Driessen offered a more personal reflection. A policy-maker herself, she described applying community-led methods to improve her own street — and discovering how difficult it can be to navigate bureaucracy, expectations and trust, even with institutional knowledge. Her experience brought a humility to the debate: genuine participation is slow, relational work that tests even the most committed practitioners.
Walking is increasingly recognised in transport and health policy
Together, these examples captured the essential duality of the walking movement. Policy sets the framework, but people give it life. Tactical urbanism shows what’s possible; data and governance make it durable. Walking succeeds when systems and citizens walk together.
Walking and Health Creation
Our own presentation, Walking as a Pathway to Health Creation, added another dimension. Drawing on Beat the Street data and the Health Creation Index, we explored how walking not only increases physical activity but strengthens the broader conditions that support wellbeing — connection, safety and value. Participants who became active during the intervention showed the largest improvements, reinforcing that walking is a catalyst for health creation, not merely an outcome of it.
Walking not only increases physical activity but strengthens the broader conditions that support wellbeing — connection, safety and value
Walking Beyond Transport
A recurring insight throughout Walk21 was the need to separate walking from the narrow category of transport. Walking is mobility, but also recreation, social connection, reflection and play — a way of inhabiting the world. Recognising this wider value changes how cities design and invest. It shifts the question from how people move to how people live.
Walk21 Tirana left a clear impression of progress and shared purpose. Across continents and contexts, the walking movement is gaining confidence — grounded in evidence, creativity and participation. And like Tirana itself, it continues to evolve: learning, adapting and stepping steadily toward a healthier, more connected future.
Walking is mobility, but also recreation, social connection, reflection and play
