Many studies and land use planning attempts have done to influence people’s travel choices these days. Rather than sprawl development with automobile-dependent, single-use zoning, and cul-de-sacs, scholars and city planners now prefer and recommend more walkable, mixed-use development, and compact development. Along with neo-traditional development and pedestrian pockets, one trend of recent urban planning, Transit-Oriented Development (TOD), has attracted people’s attention. Given the new development of transportation methods, the present study explores how new transit stations will change people’s mobility and activity patterns. The main contribution of this project is to create an index of walkability attributions in a TOD setting based on previous research and to suggest assessment measures of walkability using a Geographic Information System (GIS). / text

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Master of Landscape Architecture / Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Mary C. Kingery-Page / Literature shows that walkable neighborhoods have the potential to significantly decrease the carbon footprint of cities by lessening the need to drive, as well as providing many health, economic, and social benefits to society. The goal of this research, therefore, was to devise a practical strategy to create walkable places in the car-oriented city of Wichita, Kansas. A necessary component of this strategy is an “urban triage,” described by Jeff Speck in Walkable City as identifying streets with the most existing potential and concentrating limited resources to their improvement (2012, 254). This report employed an urban triage of Wichita at two scales based on three central characteristics of walkability: urban fabric, dense street network and connectivity. Comparing block length and link to node ratio, I built a case for downtown, which is organized on a traditional grid of streets, over a typical shopping district organized around the more modern hierarchical pattern of streets. Within downtown, I further narrowed the study area primarily based on urban fabric, the degree to which streets are enclosed by buildings. I created a method to measure urban fabric, using aerial imagery and street views, taking into account the consistency of the street wall, height of buildings and foreground. The strongest complete corridor, in terms of urban fabric, and three potential links between that corridor and downtown’s largest event space, became the study area for further analysis. A rubric, based on characteristics of walkability extrapolated from literature, served as the instrument to measure the attributes of each block in the study area. Each attribute, as well as the characteristics that they create, yielded a map, contrasting strong and weak blocks. This analysis provided the detailed information necessary to create an informed conceptual strategy to resolve these weaknesses. Selective building infill resolved gaps in the urban fabric, road diets and improved crossings restored modal balance to the street, and a new pedestrian corridor completed a broken street and activated an existing park.

Research from multiple domains has provided insights into how neighborhood design can be improved to have a more favorable effect on physical activity, a concept known as walkability. The relevant research findings/hypotheses have been integrated into a Walkability Framework, which organizes the design elements into nine walkability categories. The purpose of this study was to test whether this conceptual framework can be used as a model to measure the interactions between the built environment and physical activity. We explored correlations between the walkability categories and physical activity reported through a survey of residents of Tucson, Arizona (n=486). The results include significant correlations between the walkability categories and physical activity as well as between the walkability categories and the two motivations for walking (recreation and transportation). To our knowledge, this is the first study that reports links between walkability and walking for recreation. Additionally, the use of the Walkability Framework allowed us to identify the walkability categories most strongly correlated with the two motivations for walking. The results of this study support the use of the Walkability Framework as a model to measure the built environment in relation to its ability to promote physical activity. (C) 2017 The Authors.

Esta dissertação apresenta uma exploração teórica sobre o tema da qualidade espacial na arquitetura em suas diferentes escalas, tendo em conta o ponto de vista de um caminhante sensível ao meio que o envolve. Entende-se, no contexto teórico a ser apresentado, que o tema da qualidade do espaço público urbano tem particular relevância no atual momento das cidades, em função da prioridade destinada a automóveis e veículos automotores nas soluções da espacialidade urbana, normalmente em detrimento daquele que usa a cidade a pé. O trabalho busca fundamentação na produção literária e nas teorias de um grupo de autores com produção reconhecida no tema da espacialidade na arquitetura e nos estudos da cidade. A investigação sobre a qualidade espacial da arquitetura a ser apresentada fundamenta-se em três pilares, dois descritivos e um metodológico. De um lado estarão as descrições da configuração espacial e, de outro, em paralelo, as descrições da percepção espacial, ou seja, o modo como as situações espaciais são vividas e apreciadas pelo observador, quando o corpo e os sentidos do usuário ocupam um papel principal. Trabalhar-se-á com a hipótese de que os efeitos de configuração, sobre a qualidade espacial, ocorrem simultaneamente nas escalas local e global (AGUIAR, 2016a). Na escala global, a configuração espacial será abordada, inicialmente, através da descrição morfológica e, num segundo momento, a partir da condição de acessibilidade/sintaxe espacial e seus impactos na dita vitalidade urbana. Na escala local, a configuração espacial será examinada através tanto das características de delimitação espacial/enclausuramento quanto das características da constituição do espaço. Na sequência, tomando o corpo como categoria de percepção, o trabalho examinará as condições de legibilidade, entendida como funcionalidade visual, e de comodidade, entendida como funcionalidade háptica. Tendo em conta as descrições da qualidade espacial acima delineadas, o trabalho aborda, ao final, o tema do movimento como categoria metodológica. Seguindo esse roteiro, busca-se trazer à luz um conjunto de descrições da cidade relevantes no entendimento daquilo que se entende como qualidade espacial urbana, esperando assim contribuir para o debate sobre esse tópico, tão relevante no momento atual nos meios acadêmico e profissional. / This dissertation presents a theoretical exploration of the subject of spatial quality at different scales in architecture, taking into account the point of view of a walker sensitive to his/her surrounding environment. It is understood in the theoretical context to be presented hereafter that the subject of the quality of an urban, public space is particularly relevant to the cities of today, given the prioritization of cars and other motor vehicles in the designs of urban spaces, usually at the expense of those favored by walkers. This work is grounded in the literary production and the theories of a group of authors recognized for their authority in the field of spatiality in architecture and in the study of cities. The investigation of the spatial quality of architecture to be presented here is based on two descriptive pillars and one methodological. On the one hand, there are the descriptions of the spatial configurations and, on the other hand and in parallel, there are the descriptions of the spatial perception, namely how the observer is living and appreciating spatial situations in which the user’s body and senses play the main role. We will work on the hypothesis that the effects of configuration on the spatial quality occur simultaneously at the local and global scales (AGUIAR, 2016a). At the global scale, we will initially approach the spatial configuration through the morphological description and, in a second phase, from the condition of spatial accessibility/syntax and its impacts on the urban vitality. At the local scale, we will examine the spatial configuration on the one hand through the characteristics of the special delimitation/enclosure and, on the other hand, through the characteristics of the space’s constitution. Then, taking the body as the category of perception, our work is looking at the conditions of legibility, understood as the visual functionality, and of commodity, understood as the haptic functionality. Taking into account the descriptions of the spatial quality outlined above, we eventually address the theme of the movement as a methodological category. Following this roadmap, we aim to bring light to a series of descriptions of the city that are relevant to the comprehension of what is understood as urban quality. We hope this will contribute to the debate on this issue, which is so important currently among both academic and professional circles.

Walkability indices are currently used for a wide range of research and commercial applications. Few studies have examined the relationship between walkability indices and measured pedestrian volume or walking rates, nor explored moderators of pedestrian volume such as weather. With 14 years of traffic study data from the City of Ottawa, a spatial auto-regressive (SAR) multi-level model (MLM) was used to understand the proportion of variance in walking explained by the commercial Walk Score® index and selected weather variables. Modeling revealed that a significant proportion of pedestrian volume at a given location in Ottawa, including its spatial lag, was explained by the corresponding Walk Score® value and its spatial lag (51.45%). Furthermore, weather expressed as a combination of ‘felt’ temperature, presence or absence of precipitation, and percent cloud cover, accounted for 2.79% of the variance in walking. These findings indicate that walkability indices may provide value as cost-effective engineering and urban planning tools.

Walkability research has broadened in the past few years, being performed by researchers in different fields such as urban planning, public health, and transportation planning. Definitions of walkability and methods of operationalizing the concept vary widely. Since the results of studies that incorporate walkability may well have policy implications, it is important to consider the potential impacts of different definitions and methods of measurement. This thesis investigates to what extent walkability indices may differ when either the composition of the indices is changed or when different quantitative methods of standardization are used to summarize their component measures. The association of these different walkability indices with socio-demographic variables is also investigated to determine the variability in such associations. The thesis also investigates to what extent changing the spatial extent of a study area, in this case the definition of an urbanized area, may also lead to differences in how walkability measures may be associated with socio-demographic variables. In the analysis process, several methodological innovations were developed such as applying new detailed GIS analysis, developing two accessibility measures and two accessibility indices, creating a comprehensive walkability index, and applying the latest methods from spatial econometrics. The results from investigating the research questions showed that even though walkability scores across the study area are different based on index compositions or index standardization methods, their association with socio-demographics is fairly consistent. When investigated for areas with different extents, the association between walkability and socio-demographics differed more.

Recent consumer surveys and demographic analyses indicate a growing demand for pedestrian and transit designed development. This thesis presents an analysis of office rents in the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area of Ontario, Canada. The effects of building quality, accessibility, and location are explored with a specific focus on the influences of walkability, public transit and private transit accessibility. The theoretical background of this research is related to the hedonic methodology, which is extensively used for explaining transaction price or rental price variations of real property. Cross sectional data of the Toronto CMA office market from the year 2010 is utilized for the hedonic price estimation. The hedonic price function is specified in the log linear form and is estimated with linear regression in SPSS. The analysis of over 2,000 asking rental rates reveals that buildings with high Walkscores and excellent accessibility to public transit and transportation infrastructure command significantly higher rents as compared to buildings with fewer nearby amenities and accessibility. The walkability findings are the first of their kind for Toronto and Canadian office markets and in line with results documented for the US office market and European office market.

Walkability is desirable for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, walkability is desirable because it is the only available or affordable transportation modal choice. Urban form and transportation infrastructure can be hostile to pedestrians because cars are prioritized first, and pedestrians often face unsafe situations and a lack of pedestrian facilities. This analysis explores a spatial distribution of pedestrian access to opportunities in Austin, TX, and examines the locations of households of different income levels relative to areas of high pedestrian access to opportunities. To achieve results that are equally precise across the study area, this analysis employs GIS analysis and U.S. Census 2000 data, and analyzes the study area using a ½ square-mile grid system. High pedestrian access areas are defined as locations where residential parcels have pedestrian network access to multiple types of opportunities and above average number of opportunities. This analysis finds that low income households are more associated with high pedestrian access areas in Austin, TX, than moderate and high income households. If lower income households are consistently shown to rely more on pedestrian infrastructure than moderate or high income households, it may be important to allocate funding to high pedestrian access areas with low income populations in such a way that is socially equitable, and that will result in more use of the pedestrian facilities. / text

Typical of many American downtowns, Austin, Texas, has experienced renewed interest in redevelopment over the past two decades. Following City policies, this redevelopment has tended to be mixed-use in nature and has included elements of placemaking and walkability. A glaring exception to recent trends is the Capitol Complex, an area north of the State Capitol building that is home to various state government office buildings. The Capitol Complex displaced a more traditional mixed-use neighborhood in the 1950s and has been plagued by disjointed planning activities ever since. Recent budgetary challenges and a shortage of office space have prompted the state government to reexamine the Capitol Complex as a target for redevelopment. This professional report scrutinizes the Capitol Complex as a “non-place” that is challenged by walkability issues in an effort to make recommendations to ensure successful redevelopment that is more consistent with that found in the rest of downtown Austin. First, the literature on placemaking and walkability demonstrate what the Capitol Complex lacks. A case study provides a good comparison to see what policies have helped to improve districts near state office buildings. Second, the history of the Capitol Complex provides context for how the area became what it is today. Third, a land use and walkability analysis utilizing GIS along two corridors in the Complex and a pedestrian count show that the area is unfriendly to pedestrians and lacks activity on nights and weekends. Finally, the report offers both policy and urban design recommendations to help ensure that redevelopment activities contribute to make the Capitol Complex a walkable “place.” / text