Introduction to Pedestrian Mobility in Cities
Learn how to design, evaluate, and advocate for walkable cities. Explore the connections between mobility, carbon emissions, health, equity, and sustainability—and gain tools to create safer, more inclusive urban spaces.
Course Information
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About this Course
Explore the future of walkable cities – and learn how to analyze and plan pedestrian-friendly environments with this online course from the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning.
In today’s rapidly changing urban landscape, and growing attention on climate change, public health and equitable access, walkability is more than an amenity—it’s a key strategy for achieving sustainable and livable communities globally. This course provides a strong foundation for understanding pedestrian mobility within broader urban systems, equipping you with the knowledge and skills to collaborate across fields, communicate the value of pedestrian improvements, and advocate effectively for better walking environments.
You’ll learn core concepts about pedestrian behavior, built environment influences on sustainable mobility, and policies that seek to shift the modale share of everyday movement across diverse urban settings. Through global case studies—from megacities to small towns—you’ll explore methods for evaluating pedestrian environments and unpack the policies, social dynamics, and design choices that influence walkability. By weaving together social, spatial, and behavioral perspectives, this course offers a fresh, human-centered way of thinking about urban streets and mobility systems.
Whether you're an urban or transportation planner, designer, policymaker, community advocate, or simply passionate about improving cities, this course will help you understand how pedestrian networks connect with sustainability, urban design, and issues of daily life.
Whether you're aiming to design safer streets, decarbonize a city, create more equitable mobility policies, or build more people-centered places, Introduction to Pedestrian Mobility in Cities gives you the knowledge and perspective to drive meaningful change.
What you'll learn
- Understand key principles of pedestrian mobility
- Analyze pedestrian networks and urban walkability
- Evaluate social, policy, and design influences
- Identify barriers to safe, accessible walking
- Develop strategies to improve pedestrian environments
Access the full course syllabus here.
Meet your instructors
Andres Sevtsuk
Associate Professor of Urban Science and Planning
Andres Sevtsuk is Head of the City Design and Development Group and an Associate Professor (with tenure) of Urban Science and Planning at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, where he also leads the City Form Lab. His research focuses on the influence of urban form on sustainable travel behavior and on public qualities of built environments--urban ground floors, main streets, and amenity location patterns. His work contributes to making city environments more walkable, sustainable and equitable, bridging the fields of urban design, spatial analytics and mobility research. Andres is the author of the Urban Network Analysis framework and software tools, used by researchers and practitioners around the world to model pedestrian activity in cities and to study coordinated land use and transportation development in ways that reduce transportation carbon emissions. He has published a book entitled “Street Commerce: Creating Vibrant Urban Sidewalks” with Penn Press and before that, "Urban Network Analysis: Tools for Modeling Walking and Biking in Cities" with Tianjin University Press. Andres has collaborated with a number of city governments, international organizations, planning practices and developers on urban designs, plans and policies in both developed and rapidly developing urban environments, including those in US, Indonesia, Australia, Lebanon, Estonia and Singapore. He has led various international research projects, published in planning, transportation and urban design journals, and received numerous awards for his work.
His classes at MIT include 11.001 Introduction to Urban Design and Development, 11.324/11.024 Modeling Pedestrian Activity in Cities, as well as urban design workshops and studios.
Before joining MIT, Andres was an Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He holds a PhD from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning and an SMArchs in Architecture and Urbanism from MIT.
