Improving Walkability by Focusing on Residents’ Needs and Neighborhood’s Built Environment
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VIEW CORRECTIONPublication: Leveraging Sustainable Infrastructure for Resilient Communities
ABSTRACT
While the benefits of walkability are clear, it could be difficult how to determine the best approach to budgeting on sidewalk development decisions in order to maximize the efficiency of the investment. This paper presents a methodology and a tool to evaluate the walkability of different areas in a city with focus on the gap between walk needs of residents and built environment of the neighborhood. To do that, we first characterize walkability and the most contributing socio-demographic variables on it, like trip purpose, number of vehicles in the household, and the age of individuals. Next, through running principal component analysis, we define a unique index for walkability, which is used to find areas with greatest demand of walkability in their neighborhood through hotspot analysis. Finally, using the Pedestrian Environment Index as an indicator for walkability supply of the neighborhood, we identify the most efficient places to develop sidewalk by finding the gap between demand and supply of walkability in each neighborhood. In addition to providing an informative location-based measure for policymakers, the methodology opens avenues to address some equity concerns related to walkability and prioritize neighborhoods for any improvement based on the needs of the residents.
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Leveraging Sustainable Infrastructure for Resilient Communities
Pages: 70 - 81
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Published online: Jan 20, 2022
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