Abstract
Walking is the most common, environment-friendly, and inexpensive type of physical activity. To perform in-depth walkability analysis, one option is to objectively evaluate different aspects of built environment related to walkability. In this study, we proposed a computational framework for walkability measurement using open data. Three major steps of this framework include the web scrapping of publicly available online data, determining varying weights of variables, and generating a synthetic walkability index. The results suggest three major conclusions. First, the proposed framework provides an explicit mechanism for walkability measurement. Second, the synthetic walkability index from this framework is comparable to Walk Score, and it tends to have a slightly higher sensitivity, especially in highly walkable areas in urban core. Third, this framework was effectively applied in a metropolitan area that contains three small cities that together represent a small, old shrinking region, which extends the topical area in the literature. This framework has the potential to quantify walkability in any city, especially cities with a small population where walkability has rarely been studied, or those having no quantification indicator. For such areas, researchers can calculate the synthetic walkability index based on this framework, to assist urban planners, community leaders, health officials, and policymakers in their practices to improve the walking environment of their communities.
Highlights
Walking plays a key role in promoting healthy communities, increasing economic opportunities, and strengthening social connections [1]
Visual comparison and correlation analysis were used to evaluate the performance of the synthetic walkability index
It can be observed that the blocks with a high value of synthetic walkability index were concentrated in the urban center of each of the three cities
Summary
Walking plays a key role in promoting healthy communities, increasing economic opportunities, and strengthening social connections [1]. It attracts attentions of urban planners, health officials, geographers, social scientists, and policy makers. Walking is the most common form of physical activity among adults [2]. The extent to which adults will walk in their neighborhoods relies on a variety of factors in urban environments [3,4,5]. As a popular term in the urban studies and public health literature, walkability is increasingly employed to describe the capacity of a community to support its residents’ walking activity [6,7]. The characteristics associated with neighborhood walkability have positive impacts on three aspects
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