The publication highlights a central challenge facing many European cities: active travel infrastructure alone is often not enough to create accessible and inclusive neighbourhoods. Effective planning requires a better understanding of how people actually experience and use urban environments.

COLINE contributed to Hard Truth 4: “A Street Can Feel Safe and Still Be Impossible to Walk.”
The inputs came mainly from the COLINE researchers at the Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), César A. Hidalgo, Renáta Hosnedlová and SeungHwan Kim, who are drawing on research conducted in Budapest, Copenhagen, Toulouse, Turin, and Vienna.
Their study explores the relationship between perceived safety and walkability. While streets that appear safer are often more walkable, the two concepts are not identical. Some streets may feel comfortable and secure while still presenting significant barriers for pedestrians.

To investigate these questions, COLINE combines artificial intelligence analysis of street-level imagery with high-resolution mobility data. This approach allows researchers to examine not only how urban environments look, but also how they function in practice, including how different groups move through neighbourhoods and access local amenities.
The DUT Knowledge Hub Publication is the result of collaboration between researchers from the DUT projects Silver Ways, 15minESTATES, DREAMS, COLINE, and ENACT 15mC. Together, the projects provide evidence that creating more inclusive and sustainable cities requires going beyond simple measures of distance or infrastructure provision and paying closer attention to how urban environments are experienced in everyday life.

The publication was co-authored by representatives of the participating projects, including COLINE researcher Balázs Lengyel.
The full publication is available through the DUT Knowledge Hub.