Walkability
Instead, it should be relatively complete livable spaces that serve a variety of uses, users, and transportation modes and reduce the need for cars for travel.
[3] Factors influencing walkability include the presence or absence and quality of footpaths, sidewalks or other pedestrian rights-of-way, traffic and road conditions, land use patterns, building accessibility, and safety, among others.
[4] One proposed definition for walkability is: "The extent to which the built environment is friendly to the presence of people living, shopping, visiting, enjoying or spending time in an area".
Using ratings from an expert panel, it was possible to measure five urban design qualities in terms of physical characteristics of streets and their edges: imageability, enclosure, human scale, transparency and complexity.
While DMA is based on walkability measures, popular "walk score" or "rate my street" websites offer more metrics to connect urban morphology with better environmental and health outcomes.
Access networks are also multi-modal and need to be understood from the perspective of those who choose between modes of walking, cycling, public transport, and cars.
Walking has the advantage that it is a much more predictable trip time than public transport or cars, where we have to allow for delays caused by poor service, congestion, and parking.
[10] Major infrastructural factors include access to mass transit, presence and quality of footpaths, buffers to moving traffic (planter strips, on-street parking or bike lanes) and pedestrian crossings, aesthetics, nearby local destinations, air quality, shade or sun in appropriate seasons, street furniture, traffic volume and speed.
Reid Ewing and Robert Cervero's five D's of the built environment—density, diversity, design, destination accessibility, and distance to transit—heavily influence an area's walkability.
She coined the terms "social capital", "mixed primary uses", and "eyes on the street", which were adopted professionally in urban design, sociology, and many other fields.
Walkability indices have been found to correlate with both lower Body Mass Index (BMI) and high levels of physical activity of local populations.
[23] A further justification for walkability is founded upon evolutionary and philosophical grounds, contending that gait is important to the cerebral development in humans.
[24] In addition, walkable neighborhoods have been linked to higher levels of happiness, health, trust, and social connections in comparison with more car-oriented places.
[27] There are well-established links between the design of an urban area (including its walkability and land use policy) and health outcomes for that community.
The benefits of less emissions include improved health conditions and quality of life, less smog, and less of a contribution to global climate change.
Studies have shown that noise pollution can disrupt certain senses that animals rely on to find food, reproduce, avoid predators, etc.
These green spaces can assist in regulatory ecological services such as flooding, improving the quality of both air and water, carbon sequestration, etc.
[42] A type of zoning called Form-based coding is a tool that some American cities, like Cincinnati, are employing to improve walkability.
[52] A simple way to determine the walkability of a block, corridor or neighborhood is to count the number of people walking, lingering and engaging in optional activities within a space.
[53] This process is a vast improvement upon pedestrian level of service (LOS) indicators, recommended within the Highway Capacity Manual.
[61][62][63][64][65] Moreover, the recent development of computer vision and street view imagery has provided significant potential to automatically assess spaces for pedestrians from the ground level.
