Skybridge in Covent Garden.

Minneapolis skyway.

A multi-level shopping centre bridge in Calgary.

The skyway system in Taipei.

Skyways in Atlanta.

In an urban setting, a skyway, catwalk, sky bridge, or skywalk is a type of pedway consisting of an enclosed or covered bridge between two buildings. This protects pedestrians from the weather. These skyways are usually owned by businesses, and are therefore not public spaces (compare with sidewalk). Skyways usually connect on the first few floors above the ground-level floor, though they are sometimes much higher, as in Petronas Towers (though this skyway is often referred to as a sky bridge). The space in the buildings connected by skyways is often devoted to retail business, so areas around the skyway may operate as a shopping mall. Non-commercial areas with closely associated buildings, such as university campuses, can often have skyways and/or tunnels connecting buildings.

The world's largest skyway network – Calgary, Alberta's "+15 Walkway" system – has a total length of 16 km (10 miles). However, the system is discontinuous, and it does not connect every downtown building. The largest continuous network of skyways – the Minneapolis Skyway System – spans 8 miles (13 km) connecting 69 blocks in downtown Minneapolis.

Other cities in the Midwest, such as Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Rochester, and Saint Paul also have significant skyway systems. On a smaller scale, terminals of large airports are often connected by skywalk systems, as at Manchester Airport, United Kingdom.

The Mumbai Skywalk system is a discontinuous system of 50 skywalks in and around the central business district and the suburban regions of Mumbai. The first of these is a 1.3km (0.8mi) long skywalk connecting the suburban regions of Bandra and Kurla.

Some cities have the equivalent of a skyway underground, and many locales have mixed subway/skyway systems; see underground city.

[edit] Early examples of skywalks

• Copenhagen, Denmark: skywalk connecting courts building to adjacent uses, 18th century
• Faaborg, Funen, Denmark: skywalk in centrum, 18th century
• Venice, Italy, Bridge of Sighs, connects Doge's Palace and prison, 16th century

[edit] Environmental factors

Besides pedestrian safety and convenience, the chief reasons assigned by urban planners for skywalk development are decrease of traffic congestion, reduction in vehicular air pollution and separation of people from vehicular noise. A number of cities (for example, Spokane, Washington) have given intricate analysis to skywalk systems employing computer models to optimize skywalk layout (Carbon monoxide dispersion analysis in downtown Spokane, ESL Inc., Sunnyvale, (1973))

[edit] List of cities with notable systems

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (July 2009)

More cities and details: Montgomery, Michael R. and Richard Bean, "Market Failure, government failure, and the private supply of public goods: the case of climate-controlled walkway networks," in Public Choice, Vol. 99 (1999), pages 403-437, whose abstract may be seen at RePEc: Research Papers in Economics.

[edit] See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: skyway

Look up catwalk in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Catwalk (disambiguation)
• Footbridge
• Overpass
• Pedestrian separation structure
• Pedway

[edit] References