WalkYourPlace - Building a Web-based Platform for Urban Accessibility Analysis ( breakout presentation )

Abstract

A high degree of walkability is one of the keys to complete and liveable neighbourhoods. Apartments with shops, a pharmacy and a park around the corner are often in high demand. A study by National Association of Realtors but also newspaper and blog discussions show that walkable access to daily services is perceived by citizens to be important. Thereby a neighborhood is considered “walkable” if services for daily and weekly routines, such as bringing kids to school, grocery shopping, and visits to entertainment locations (e.g. cafe, bar, cinema) can easily and safely be walked to in 5 to 15 minutes. Our aim is to build an online platform that permits to evaluate a neighbourhood’s accessibility based on access to points-of-interest (POI), such as parks, schools, stores, cafes, theatres etc. within a certain travel time. Thereby we want to account for the evaluation of different transport modes (walk, bike, bus) and different demographic groups. In a first stage we developed a platform prototype for Calgary, Canada, and second Santiago de Chile. The platform is based on the free software OpenTripPlanner.org as routing backend, and a web-browser based user interface developed with the Python Django framework. Data comes mainly from OpenStreetMap, and transit data from local transit agencies. The method for the score calculation evaluates and weights the number and type of POI found within a network-based travel-shed. The sheds size is defined by the chosen travel mode and travel time. This method was original presented by WalkScore.com utilizing, however, a 1-mile circle for evaluation of walking. The prototype permits to measure urban accessibility for a particular map location given by the user (see http://webmapping.ucalgary.ca/WalkYourPlace/). We also added options for batch calculations to calculate accessibility for a complete city by evaluating a point grid. With the platform it’s possible to evaluate accessibility and in particular walkability for a user defined location. However, evaluation of planning scenarios - before and after infrastructure changes are also possible. For instance, we evaluated if and how accessibility changes for a new subway line in Santiago de Chile currently under construction.