Wayfinding

Pedestrian-oriented wayfinding supports pedestrian navigation and promotes safety, contributing to increased physical activity, accessibility, and feelings of well-being.

Key Terms

• Wayfinding is the process of orienting users to their location within a set environment. Wayfinding most often utilizes navigational signage or directional signage to cue users to their surroundings, providing distances, destinations, and other helpful information to help aid and ease traversing a site.

For full strategy and documentation requirements, please refer to the digital scorecard made available on the Fitwel Platform. 

Strategy Insights

Fitwel’s wayfinding strategy is intended to promote walking both within and surrounding a project. Wayfinding builds cognizance of destinations and amenities and shares a sense of proximity in order to encourage short journeys on foot.

• Fitwel requires a minimum of three amenities/destinations within the project boundary and two amenities/destinations external to the project but within ½ mile or 800 meters walking distance.
• For Alternative Compliance (half credit) the only difference is that instead of showing three on-site and two off-site amenities, the signs may show just three on-site amenities.
• The list of qualifying amenities within the strategy requirements is not exhaustive. A project may submit an unlisted amenity provided it can justify the purpose and rationale behind promoting access to that amenity.
• Listed walking distance on wayfinding signs must be provided in measured distance (e.g., in feet, meters, or mileage), and not in walking time. Radius circles or radius distances will not be accepted, since it can often misrepresent distances (actual walking distances may be much longer than a straight line between the project and a given amenity). Walking time is subjective and dependent on the age and ability of a pedestrian. Measured distance is objective and provides a more accurate sense of distance. 
• Do not forget to include directional language/symbols AND walking distances to amenities within the wayfinding signage.

Documentation Guidance 

• For projects pursuing a Design certification, distances may be indicated from undeveloped parcels to amenities in order to show qualifying distance.
• The map or plan must show two things:
  • The physical locations where these wayfinding signs are posted and annotated distances, to confirm the wayfinding signs are located no more than 100 ft/30 m from all required locations (the on-site buildings, the on-site parks and plazas, etc.).
  • The locations of all of the amenities (three on-site, two off-site) that are detailed in that wayfinding signage.
• The photographs of the physical wayfinding signage that is in place onsite should include zoomed-in photographs that are legible, revealing the details of the sign content, and zoomed-out photographs that show the context around the signage locations.

Sample Documentation

Documentation credit to Rowan Williams Davies & Irwin Inc.