In the past, we'd always found Chinese cities to be fairly walker-friendly. But our last visit was more than seven years ago, and Kunming was new to us anyway. So, we weren't sure what to expect.

Well, Yunnan's capital has turned out to be remarkably walkable. This is an important criterion for me, so while I've been stomping the streets (and you can rack up 12 or so km a day here without even thinking about it), I've been wondering: What exactly makes somewhere walkable? Here are my (very inexpert and largely anecdotal) ideas:

1.

One of the first things we noticed when we stepped out of the metro on Saturday was the vast number of electric vehicles, whether bicycles, scooters, or cars. I don't know the long-term environmental implications of this transition, but short-term it makes for perceptibly less noise and less pollution.

What would happen if all those two-wheelers became four-wheelers is a question to ponder... In the meantime, two-wheelers have focused on making life more comfortable for themselves. We remembered from previous trips the scooter "duvets" (padded contraptions that attach to the handlebars and keep the rider warm). Either new or unremembered were the all-enveloping scooter coveralls, with cute little ear-flaps for the wing mirrors. When it rains, they cover the rider too -- a far cry from our Indonesian motorcycling days, when we faffed around with flappy capes and over-trousers.


The traffic is also pretty organized. It's generally easy to cross the road, for example. OK, when you get a green light, you have to watch out for the scooters... It seems accepted that scooters can ignore pedestrians' green lights, so long as they don't actually knock anyone over (except in the morning rush hour, when police stop them cutting up the walkers). Overall, though, there's a respect for pedestrians, and -- I'm not sure whether this is cause or effect -- people do actually walk here. We're not at all unusual.

2.

Kunming is very green. We've been hugely impressed by the massive number of trees, and the obvious care that's taken with planting and maintaining flower beds and shrubs.





3.

Infrastructure definitely makes a difference. If you run out of walking energy, you're not marooned. There's ride-hailing (Didi has worked for us so far), but there's also a fabulous bus-and-metro network that's very cheap and easy to use. On a more prosaic note, but it's definitely influential, there are plenty of public toilets... Good old Kunming, most places could learn from you... All the public facilities I have had dealings with have been free and clean and private. The lack of aggressive dogs also contributes to walking comfort levels...

4.

A fourth element of walkability here is that there's just such a lot of cute stuff around... Which means you always have something to photograph:









A feature I especially love: You know those box-things on the streets that have something to do with electricity? At home, they're often plastered with small-scale ads (for events or money-lending services, for example). In Europe, they're generally tagged into oblivion. But in Kunming (or our bit of it anyway), they're zanily painted:









Which all makes you wonder... This can't come out of nowhere...

Slight digression: There's a whole economy driven by cuteness. Labubu -- the creature with the round face and the jagged teeth -- is perhaps the latest phenomenon to hit the headlines, and in my IR days, I'd definitely have been discussing it with students, but this is just a small piece of a much bigger pie. I've still not actually seen one, by the way, but here's a mural:


5.

Of course, a lot of what makes Kunming walkable derives from its modernization. Which is a kind of bittersweet tale: "In 1995," say Hartley and Walker, writing in 2013, "the vast majority of Kunming’s ancient walled city, a 4 square km zone of wagon alleys and old wooden homes, was intact. Now 85 percent of that is gone, replaced with an ultra-modern downtown of high-rise hotels, shopping malls, and office buildings."

We all did it, didn't we? Knocked everything down because it was a bit insanitary and embarrassingly old-fashioned? And then comes that crucial point where you realize you're destroying rather too much. According to Hartley and Walker, that pivot had already been reached when they were writing. Funding had started to become available for renovation; protected building lists had been drawn up: "Part of the reason is that the city has found an economic incentive. Traditional buildings and architecture are big draws for tourists."

In the area where we're staying, there's a small number of genuinely old buildings, and a huge number of "new-old" buildings. I can't always tell the difference... It's an artificial environment, and those streets are heavily tourist-oriented, but it's undeniably picturesque, and it's a big drawcard:










Close to Green Lake Park, there's an area that seems to blend both old and new, local and charming. These photos were taken just off Wenlin Street:





The new -- we're a stone's throw from the Shuncheng Shopping Centre, inter alia -- is pretty spectacular:




But nowhere, old or new, is immune from changing habits. Puzzled by the way the modern shopping environment here feels very different from what we're used to in Malaysia, I've been reading up about the shifting profile of malls in China generally, which have had to compete with the undeniable convenience of online shopping. I think there's something of that change visible in this bit of Kunming. Some malls seem to have shrunk; others have been designed in a much more open and modular way; there's a heavy focus on eating out.

***

I'm sure local people could point to all the disadvantages I'm not perceiving as a short-term visitor. At the end of the day, I'm glad I'm not a city-planner... But what they've done here has certainly made our stay very enjoyable.