Walkability on the King Street
Photo credit M. Veysel Yilmaz
Author M. Veysel Yilmaz
Spatial configuration in cities has a direct effect on walking and cycling potentials and accessibility; which in turn have direct impact on viability of many retail businesses, social integration, public health, social safety and security (social segregation and crime havens), and environment (car dependency and its consequences).
Walking has been identified as the most influenceable behavior; it is also the most environmental-friendly mode of transport, social and health. From the planning view, the concept of walkability therefore aims at a built environment facilitating physical activity. It is increasingly recognized that walkability has become an important topic in the field of planning, urban design and health, since the built environment affects certain behaviors. From practice, concrete guidance is demanded as to the type of urban design features to be captured or applied to evaluate the walkability or to create active cities. The measurement of features of the street environment plays a special role in this context.
There is a need for spatial configuration analysis in order to capture walking and accessibility. In the late 1970s, British architects Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson hit on the idea that any space within a city- or the entire city itself - could be analyzed in terms of connectivity and movement. They reasoned that a city's success depended largely on how easy it was for people to move about on foot.
