Walkability and Its Relationships With Health, Sustainability, and Livability: Elements of Physical Environment and Evaluation Frameworks

Abstract

Urban sprawl and increasing population density in urban centers create the challenge to finding ways of sustainable transportation solutions that preserve the convenience of residents while reducing emissions. Therefore, walkability is a core urban design element because of being advantageous onto three fronts: health, livability, and sustainability. Adopting walkability as urban solution relieves conceptual and practical tensions between the individualistic interests manifested in the desire to own and use private cars, and the need to reduce transportation-based consumption. This review advocates that long-term health benefits from walking and physical activity are the premier incentive to repurpose our cities to be more sustainable and more walking friendly, and spark behavioral change into reducing car dependency for all daily transportations. The review inspects physical elements of the built environment that make the walking trip feasible and desirable, such as connectivity, accessibility, and closeness of destination points, presence of greenness and parks, commercial retail, and proximity to transit hubs and stations. Hence, this review explores a few popular walkability evaluation indices and frameworks that employ subjective, objective, and/or distinctive methods within variant environmental, cultural, and national context. There is no unified universal standardized walkability theory despite the need for rigorous evaluation tools for policy makers and developers. Furthermore, there is a lack of emphasis on air quality and thermal stress while approaching walkability, despite being important elements in the walking experience. Research opportunities in the field of walkability can leverage location tracking from smart devices and identify the interaction patterns of pedestrians with other transportation modes, especially for those with fundamental movement challenges such as wheelchair users.

Using open data and open-source software to develop spatial indicators of urban design and transport features for achieving healthy and sustainable cities

“…These public transport and open space typologies are associated with active transport behaviours, following those measured by Arundel et al 4 We summarised each sample point's local walkable environment using two composite indicators: 1) a daily living score 4,30,31 for local access to a mix of amenities (summing equal-weighted binary access scores to a healthy food market, a convenience store, and a public transport stop within 500m); and 2) a local walkability index 4,31 that sums equal-weighted standardised scores of population density, street intersection density, and daily living score. These measures of well-serviced and walkable neighbourhoods are standard in the built environment and health literature 32,33 with well-established associations with physical activity and walking for transport. 4,30,31 Residential point measures were aggregated and averaged to 250m hexagonal cells serving as empirically derived "neighbourhoods."…”

Walkable City and Military Enclaves: Analysis and Decision-Making Approach to Support the Proximity Connection in Urban Regeneration

“…The application of walkability principles for a more human-centered urban accessibility is at the core of current urban regeneration principles, such as health, livability and sustainability, even though neither practitioners nor scholars agree on a universal definition [31]. The quality of walkability is defined by how well the built environment enables slow mobility [32]; however, as recently stated by Baobeid, Koç and Al-Ghamdi [33], no universal standardized walkability theory has been released for policy makers and developers. Therefore, there is an increasing need to combine the land-use planning and transport across Europe due to the spreading environmental issues caused by vehicular traffic in the form of gas emission, noise, land pollution and water [34].…”

Camminare in città. Note per il progetto del marciapiede

“…Le diverse fasi della vita possono o meno essere favorevoli; muoversi a piedi richiede delle competenze, e se alcuni cittadini possono disporre di un corpo abile al camminare altri possono viceversa trovarsi in condizioni sfavorevoli. In questo senso, un progetto urbanistico che voglia mettere al centro il tema del camminare senza ridurlo ad affermazione ideologica, deve probabilmente tenere conto anche di quanto il processo di invecchiamento della popolazione potrà nel prossimo futuro far emergere domande specifiche, in cui confort, accessibilità, sicurezza, potranno assumere nuove accezioni, declinando la più generica domanda di 'muoversi bene' (Daconto et al, 2109;Baobeid et al, 2021). È anche rispetto a questo scenario che il progetto del suolo su cui camminiamo dovrà probabilmente attrezzarsi, trovando nuovi dispositivi architettonici capaci non tanto e non solo di fornire soluzioni a nuovi problemi specifici -evitando cioè di trattare gli anziani come una categoria specializzata (Ranzo et al, 2004) -quanto di reinterpretare il suo ruolo in certo senso antieroico, di costruzione di una sostanziale trama infrastrutturale che possa collaborare a esprimere il senso, la dignità e il contegno dello spazio urbano.…”