Towards an Inclusive Walking Community—A Multi-Criteria Digital Evaluation Approach to Facilitate Accessible Journeys

Abstract

Half the world’s population now lives in cities, and this figure is expected to reach 70% by 2050. To ensure future cities offer equity for multiple age groups, it is important to plan for spatially inclusive features such as pedestrian accessibility. This feature is strongly related to many emerging global challenges regarding health, an ageing population, and an inclusive society, and should be carefully considered when designing future cities to meet the mobility requirements of different groups of people, reduce reliance on cars, and encourage greater participation by all residents. Independent travel to public open spaces, particularly green spaces, is widely considered a key factor that affects human health and well-being and is considered a primary motivation for walking. At the same time, unfavourable steepness and restrictive access points to open spaces can limit accessibility and restrict the activities of older adults or people with mobility impairments. This paper introduces a novel open access proximity modelling web application, PedestrianCatch, that simulates pedestrian catchments for user-specified destinations utilising a crowd-source road network and open topographic data. Based on this tool, we offer a multi-criteria evaluation approach that considers travel speed, time, urban topography, and visualisation modes to accommodate various simulation needs for different urban scenarios. Two case studies are conducted to demonstrate the technical feasibility and flexibility using the proposed evaluation approach, and explain how new renewal strategies can be tested when designing a more inclusive neighbourhood. This evaluation tool is immediately relevant to urban designers, health planners, and disability communities, and will be increasingly relevant to the wider community as populations age, while the corresponding analysis approach has a huge potential to contribute to the pre-design and design process for developing more walkable and accessible communities for all.