Abstract
We present a survey of operational methods for walkability analysis and evaluation, which we hold show promise as decision-support tools for sustainability-oriented planning and urban design. An initial overview of the literature revealed a subdivision of walkability studies into three main lines of research: transport and land use, urban health, and livable cities. A further selection of articles from the Scopus and Web of Science databases focused on scientific papers that deal with walkability evaluation methods and their suitability as planning and decision-support tools. This led to the definition of a taxonomy to systematize and compare the methods with regard to factors of walkability, scale of analysis, attention on profiling, aggregation methods, spatialization and sources of data used for calibration and validation. The proposed systematization aspires to offer to non-specialist but competent urban analysts a guide and an orienteering, to help them integrate walkability analysis and evaluation into their research and practice.
Highlights
We present a survey of operational methods for walkability analysis and evaluation, which we hold show promise as decision-support tools for sustainable-oriented planning and urban design
In this paper we have presented a survey of operational approaches for measuring urban walkability, which are potentially useful as tools for urban decision and design support
We have developed a taxonomy for the comparison of different evaluation methods
Summary
We present a survey of operational methods for walkability analysis and evaluation, which we hold show promise as decision-support tools for sustainable-oriented planning and urban design. A growing body of research points at the need to better and more analytically understand other factors that shape the relationships between individuals and urban space: factors related to the quality of the built environment, its conduciveness to be walked and traversed, its capacity to attract and encourage pedestrian mobility in the everyday life, and in general to stimulate people to use and engage with the city [7,10,11,12] In many of these studies, besides a question of pedestrian accessibility, walkability is presented as an important factor and catalyst of people’s wellbeing and of their overall urban capabilities [13]. A discussion of the results of the classification is proposed in Section 5, before some concluding remarks
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