Abstract
The expansion of cities and increasing car traffic have brought problems such as increased greenhouse emission, noise pollution, and access problems that makes sustainable urban development one of the most significant concerns of urban governors. Obviously, the utilization of public transportation and walkability is one of the highly significant aspects of sustainable development. In an effort for the recognition of urban districts of Bojnourd, the current article compares the extent of walkability in each district. To investigate the walkability index using the opinions of experts and scholars 4 criteria and 22 sub-criteria were taken into consideration. In this regard, the ANP approach was also applied to improve decision making and grading the importance of criteria; districts were finally graded using the TOPSIS model concerning walkability. In the present study as an applied one, field surveys, questionnaires, library studies, and documents were the data collection tools. The findings revealed that the old district (central), have the highest walkability potential in comparison to medial, and the new development districts respectively. Since the old district has the highest amount of mixed land uses, passage connectivity, passage integration, public transport, and so forth, it can be concluded that walkability is closely related to the mentioned factors.
Highlights
One of the challenges urban and transport planners are dealing with is negligence in providing the places appropriate for walking which could attract pedestrians in cities
In order to investigate the Walkability Index applying the opinions of the experts and scholars, 4 criteria and 22 sub-criteria were considered; the criteria were asked from 70 people in the form of a questionnaire in each of the neighborhoods combined with an interview
Using the TOPSIS model, the acquired weights resulted from the ranking of criteria in ANP and the extracted data of the above-mentioned methods were combined and the final weight of each District was calculated in terms of walkability
Summary
One of the challenges urban and transport planners are dealing with is negligence in providing the places appropriate for walking which could attract pedestrians in cities. Beneficial for the health of cities and citizens, walking demands more attention of urban managers. It encompasses both the physical health of citizens and many environmental advantages, for instance, reduction of the fossil fuels use and air pollution, as well as noise and visual pollution. This method is quite economical and costs less than public transportation. Different types of urban districts in Bojnourd City including old, medial, and new are suffering from the issue of pedes-
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