Footpaths before flyovers: a walkable city is a working city

Count your own trips for a week and a truth appears: most of them are short — the school drop, the market run, the bus stop. The city's real transport network is the footpath, and we have surrendered it.

A footpath that disappears into parking, hawking and rubble does not remove the walkers; it moves them onto the road, where they become the 'pedestrian problem' the next flyover promises to solve.

The economics are lopsided in walking's favour: a kilometre of continuous, shaded, level footpath costs a rounding error of elevated infrastructure — and serves every citizen, from schoolchild to grandparent, every single day.

Build the flyovers where they are truly needed. But audit every big project with one small question first: can a ten-year-old walk to school under it safely? Cities that answer yes tend to work.