It’s natural to use the start of a new year—not to mention a new decade—to reflect and refocus on our priorities for ourselves, our families, and our work.

Yet the new year can also be the right time to identify what our priorities will be for our towns and cities over the coming months too. We’ve been calling them “neighborhood resolutions.”

For example, many people (including me) intend to walk and bike more in 2020. These activities check all the boxes: they are good for us physically and emotionally, good for the environment, good for us financially, good for the community, and just plain fun.

But as soon as we step out the door we’re reminded that the built environment often works at cross-purposes to our best intentions for our own flourishing. By and large, our communities have not been developed with walkers and cyclists—i.e., the human body—in mind. Rather, they have been planned around the goal of moving cars as quickly and efficiently as possible. That makes newly resolved pedestrians vulnerable. So in addition to walking and biking more this year, some of us are also resolving ways to make our towns and cities more walkable and bikeable.

That’s just one example.