Walkability variables: an empirical study in Rolândia - PR, Brazil

Abstract

The built environment possessed determinants of more active lifestyles, related to social and cultural reality. Thus, relevant walkability variables in large cities and in developed countries may not be suitable for mid-sized Brazilian towns. Therefore, from a case study, the objective of this research was to evaluate the relevance of eight objective walkability variables: Residential Density; Retail Floor Area Ratio; Mixed Land Use (Entropy); Space Syntax - Integration and Choice; Land and Real Estate values in a case study of a mid-sized Brazilian town. From the geocoding of data from the Municipal Urban Mobility Plan, urban form variables were aggregated and tested in 1000 meter network buffers. Analyzes were performed using a machine learning approach, through the Random Forest algorithm, in relation to self-reported walking (meters walked per unit of area). Results indicated that the most relevant characteristics were: Entropy, Integration within a 2000 meter radius and Residential Density. Contributions include the possibility of subsidizing urban planning policies in adopting an evidence-based approach.

Caminhada por diferentes propósitos: um estudo na cidade de Cambé-PR

“…Ademais, entende-se também a importância de pesquisas contextualmente relevantes para a tomada de decisão, com dados locais (Sallis et al, 2016). Apesar de existirem diversas ferramentas e índices para a avaliação da caminhabilidade, a abordagem deste estudo se estrutura em uma análise quantitativa e espacial que foi delimitada a partir de uma base de dados disponível como indicado por vários outros estudos da área (Motomura et al, 2018;Guimarães et al, 2019;Leão et al, 2020).…”

“…No Brasil, diversos estudos têm aplicado diferentes metodologias para explorar as associações entre variáveis do ambiente construído com a caminhabilidade, na micro (Lopes et al, 2018;Cambra e Moura, 2020) ou macroescala, abrangendo os índices de caminhabilidade (Motomura, Fontoura e Kanashiro, 2018;Leão et al, 2020). Entretanto, poucas com foco nos propósitos de caminhada.…”

Two-Step k-means Clustering Based Information Entropy for Detecting Environmental Barriers Using Wearable Sensor

“…In many previous studies, entropy theory has been used to measure walkability [ 40 ]. Related studies calculated walkability by calculating entropy according to the degree of land use mix [ 41 , 42 , 43 ].…”