Walkable Community Workshops

A Walkable Community Workshop is a short interactive course that involves learning the basics, touring on foot to identify issues, and cooperatively determining a plan for making improvements. The workshops address the needs of every type of citizen, from young to old, in the city, suburbs, and rural areas. Special topics may include schools, major roads, land use, neighborhood design and the needs of the mobility impaired.

Local residents and staff participated in these workshops in late April and will take what they learned from our guest national experts and work to implement recommendations agreed to.

These workshops are sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Thomas Jefferson PDC, and Charlottesville-Albemarle Metropolitan Planning Organization.

Walkability PowerPoint Slide Shows

During our recent MPO Walkability Workshops, Dan Burden created PowerPoint slideshows targeted to specific audiences. Several of the slideshows are available for viewing or download at right.

For the staff training, we also have rough notes of Dan's remarks to accompany the show —graciously compiled by Hannah Twaddell from Renaissance Planning Group. You may want to download and print the notes before viewing the shows.

Level of Quality (LOQ) Guidelines:

Most roadways are designed to produce a specific Level of Service (LOS), and the typical LOS standard measures only how fast and free-flowing motor vehicles can move. These new Level of Quality (LOQ) Guidelines, developed by Dan Burden of Walkable Communities, are meant to show graphically why some streets work better than others for access, safety and mobility of all modes.

The sheets developed to date measure walking, bicycling, traffic calming, transit access, crossings, and links, with others under development. In the tradition of "one picture is worth a thousand words, we have simply shown a range of streets or installations - from "Exemplary" to "Hall of Shame" and encourage you to make the comparison yourselves.

Please use these images to discuss roadway design with your elected, officials, design engineers, agency representatives, developers, etc. We'd like to hear from you with suggestions for improvements, how you're using them, and how we might use tools like these in our state and local government standards and regulations. Please send comments to .

Download and print Guideline Graphics

The sheets are available in two sizes. The first size is for printing a standard 8 and 1/2 inch by 11 inch document. These files are in Adobe Acrobat PDF format and require the Adobe Acrobat Reader. To download the free reader, click the following link: Get Acrobat Reader.

The second size is sufficient for printing poster-sized documents. These files are in jpg format. They are larger files and required a longer download time.

Levels of Quality–Biking	Download Standard Size	Download Poster Size
Street Element Links	Download Standard Size	Download Poster Size
Street Crossing Details	Download Standard Size	Download Poster Size
Transit Station Links	Download Standard Size	Download Poster Size
Traffic Calming–Intersection	Download Standard Size	Download Poster Size
Traffic Calming–Mid Block	Download Standard Size	Download Poster Size
Levels of Quality–Walking	Download Standard Size	Download Poster Size