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An extensive body of work from the urban planning, health, and other disciplines has documented the importance of walking to urban sustainability from health, safety, security, environmental and other perspectives. These studies come mainly from countries in North America and Europe, where the majority of the population relies on cars for transportation. Notwithstanding, in many countries in the Global South, walking remains a majority transport mode, while cars increasingly dominate the urban streetscape, but are accessible only to a minority of the population. Chile provides fertile terrain for studying this phenomenon. This article reviews current practice and recent research of walking in Chile, in light of international findings regarding walkability, equity and urban sustainability. To elaborate an overview of the depth and breadth of walking in Chile, an interdisciplinary team conducted a literature review, examined relevant case study material from experience from Chile and in particular from Santiago, and triangulated this mainly qualitative data with results from the origin-destination survey applied in Chile's main cities, Chilean traffic safety data) and results from official transport reports of other Latin American cities [Tirachini, A. (2019). South America: The challenge of transition. In J. Stanley & D. Hensher (Eds.), A research agenda for transport policy. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing]. Findings show that despite priority public investments that have largely prioritised infrastructure for cars, walking in Chile has remained as the majority transport mode up until today, especially for lowermiddle income groups, and particularly for care-related tasks performed mainly by women. In this sense, walking in Chile has proven remarkably persistent. The importance of walking as the main transport mode, against the odds, reflects economic, cultural, and urban form determinants, which are explored in this article. Furthermore, a recent upsurge in public interest and community design initiatives to improve walking, particularly the generation of a Chilean approach to "complete streets" has emerged, opening up opportunities to challenge Chile's version of automobility in favour of more equitable, active and public transportation modes. There is, therefore, in Chile an opportunity to prioritise the walking mode, improve infrastructure for walkers and build from preserving current high pedestrian modal shares, ARTICLE HISTORY

Twenty years ago, a global trend toward "automobility", in which the car is the main transport mode in cities, seemed virtually inevitable. In North America and many European countries, a generation of school children accustomed to walking or cycling to school gave way to new generations expecting to bus or travel by car. Developing countries too began to transition toward more extensive car use, as politicians, themselves drivers, began to push highways and flyways through cities, displacing whole communities and, in many cases, segregating the poor and the most vulnerable even further. Modest but significant social movements nonetheless began to push back: rickshaw drivers in India, for example, launched a major campaign to defend their way of sustenance, winning the hearts and minds of academics, key politicians, and ordinary citizens. Cycling advocacy groups have sprung up virtually everywhere. Indeed, cycling has moved to the fore as a transport mode of interest, particularly for short trips of 0-10 km, and many cities are responding with significant measures. A substantial body of practitioner experience and academic literature has documented progress by transitioning cities, mainly in the developed countries. Based on doctoral research, extensive field observation, a literature review, and hands-on experience with the application of Dutch knowledge in the author's home city of Santiago, Chile, this article reviews what we know about planning for cycling. It explores key dynamics that can be used to "harness complexity" in favour of more cycle-inclusive strategies. It also reflects on some crucial lessons from the past 40 years from the field of cycle planning that could contribute significantly to defining and planning sustainable transport systems, underlining some problematic biases and some lessons to be learned from urban traditions in developing cities.

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