Walking and Wheeling
Walking & Wheeling
for a more livable Littleton
Why a focus on walking and wheeling?
We want Littleton streets that are safe and comfortable for walking, riding a bike, using a white cane or walker, rolling in a wheelchair, going for a jog, or letting your ten year old get to school. We’re a community that values its “small town feel” and that especially means feeling at ease under our own power—strolling or rolling—as we go about our daily life.
Walking and wheeling are healthier
Active transport such as walking and riding a bike are ways to combat the alarming growth of illnesses linked to a sedentary lifestyle. It’s better for our seniors too: older Americans living in walkable neighborhoods have higher cognitive function. When we prioritize rolling and strolling, we improve our community’s basic health. Rolling and strolling are also quieter, reducing noise pollution that comes from car and truck engines. Rolling and strolling also brings us more into contact with the trees, sky, creeks, and other natural elements of Littleton.
Getting to school should be safe and easy
Littleton is blessed with a phenomenal public school system. Our children should be able to walk, roll in wheelchairs, or bike to their school without fear of injury or death. Vibrant Littleton wants to see pathways that are safe for children and parents to get to all school entrances without needing a car. It’s better for our kids, better for our neighborhoods, and better for air quality.
Old, young, or disabled? Streets that work for all of us.
When our streets work well for the most vulnerable users, they’re safer for all users. This includes car drivers. Littleton’s street designs currently favor car drivers — and speed — above the safety and comfort of vulnerable users. We want Littleton to adopt lower speed limits, shorten road crossings, add barriers beside bike lanes, widen sidewalks, remove “beg buttons” at crossings, sharpen over-wide corner radii and slip-lanes. In short: Bring balance to Littleton’s street design so that they safely work for everyone.
Actively reducing polluted air
Littleton’s Comprehensive Plan identifies “long-term sustainability of land, water, and air resources” as one of its Key Issues and Considerations. As our community faces increasingly common “Front Range ozone alert” days, ongoing drought and aridification in Colorado, year-round wildfires that keep us from outdoor activity, we must recognize that greenhouse gas emissions from transportation sources has been identified as the single largest contributor to these negative impacts. When Littleton makes strolling and rolling its best way to get around, we take a big step towards reducing emissions.
Ways to get involved
with Vibrant Littleton's campaign
Come to our next gathering where you’ll meet other Littleton neighbors who want to see positive changes like this in our city.
Add yourself to our email list. You’ll stay informed of what’s happening and how to make an impact.
Drop us a line and let us know what you think. We love to hear the thoughts of our fellow neighbors!
Read more about the benefits of walking and wheeling
We're not making this stuff up!
While the physical and social rewards of walking are many, walkability is perhaps most useful as it contributes to urban vitality and most meaningful as an indicator of that vitality.
– Jeff Speck, author of ‘Walkable City‘
Convenient Community
Convenient Community
for a livable Littleton
What do we mean by 'convenient community'?
We love places that are active, vibrant, economical, amenity-rich, interesting and accessible. So we seek a Littleton where it’s convenient to enjoy our community without always getting into a car. This means allowing closer-spaced homes as well as putting ground-floor retail/services within our neighborhoods, not out on big, noisy roadways. Compact, walkable, mid-rise, multifamily homes (mixed with existing oneplexes) can bring a convenient community to life!
Why do we want it in Littleton?
Littleton has few unbuilt parcels of land. Most of our city’s land is locked up in “single-unit zoning” (one home allowed per parcel). Allowing more types of homes (such as quadplexes or cottage courts) will expand housing options without disturbing existing neighborhoods. Often called “infill,” such buildings means we can welcome new neighbors while maintaining the overall scale of our districts.
Allowing more home types into our single-unit zones is also a good way to make a significant addition to our city’s housing supply. The benefits are many: more families with children to stem declining enrollment in Littleton Public Schools; more homes for middle income earners like teachers, nurses, and firefighters; more neighbors to share the joy of Littleton life.
And this ‘convenient community’ approach is an antidote to the land-hungry, car-dependent sprawl that is destroying so much of the Front Range countryside. By housing more people within Littleton’s already-developed boundaries, we reduce the pressure to build new housing out to the hills and prairie lands.
We're talking about the 'Missing Middle.'
The ‘Missing Middle’ refers to affordable housing achieved through multi-unit or clustered housing types compatible in scale with single-family homes and access to non-automobile transportation.
Well-designed ‘Missing Middle’ buildings unify the walkable streetscape as they greatly diversify the choices available for households of different age, size, and income. Smaller households tend to eat out more, helping our neighborhood attract wonderful restaurants. Diverse households keep diverse hours meaning we have more people out walking our streets at more varied hours—keeping them safer.
Corner stores and park-side cafes!
Convenient community is about more than just adding homes. It’s also about allowing small retail to be right there on neighborhood streets. We want Littleton to be a place where you can grab a quart of milk with just a short walk. A town where you can meet a friend for coffee on a quiet side street, not just at some shopping plaza out on a big loud arterial road.
Vibrant Littleton wants our neighborhoods full of life — including the life of nearby shops and businesses. Building for a convenient community make theses kinds of businesses more viable by bringing more people to nearby streets.
Ways to get involved
with Vibrant Littleton's campaign
Come to our next gathering where you’ll meet other Littleton neighbors who want to see positive changes like this in our city.
Add yourself to our email list. You’ll stay informed of what’s happening and how to make an impact.
Drop us a line and let us know what you think. We love to hear the thoughts of our fellow neighbors!
Read more about 'Convenient Community'
We're not making this stuff up!
By 2050 the places where we live must make a meaningful contribution to the nation’s net zero commitment. That means accommodating sustainable new buildings as much as possible within the built footprint of existing towns and cities to increase population densities. We must make denser neighborhoods, closer to services that can be reached on foot or by bike, in homes that are far more energy efficient while preserving the green setting of suburbia.”
– Ben Derbyshire, RIBA