The last article I read, Michael Southworth’s “Designing the Walkable City,” defined walkability and explained why it is both important and, for the most part, absent from contemporary North American cities; in this article, the three co-authors suggest a way of measuring walkability. “We believe that beyond adequate pedestrian accessibility indicators, attractiveness indicators are key in the process of walkability assessment,” they write (283), suggesting that they may be focusing on something not unlike the phenomenon that Southworth calls “path context” (251-54). For that reason, “measuring walkability with an additional attractiveness perspective besides pedestrian accessibility enriches the modelling and evaluation procedure” (283). “However, we argue that walkability cannot be definable as a single and universal entity,” they argue. “In fact, the built environment factors that affect walking likely differ according to other factors: pedestrian characteristics (young/old, male/female, fit/unfit), walking purpose (utilitarian/leisure), urban context and other environmental and cultural aspects,” and “integrated and structured analysis that bring together these concerns is still lacking” (283).
In this paper, the co-authors aim “to present a participatory walkability assessment framework for distinct pedestrian groups,” which they call IAAPE (Indicators of Accessibility and Attractiveness of Pedestrian Environments), which “aims to support urban planning and design for more walkable environments” (283). They explain the IAAPE tool and present a case study of two districts in Lisbon’s central area in which they applied that tool and measured the walkability of the streets. It sounds interesting, although I have trouble imagining central Lisbon as being anything other than a pedestrian’s paradise.
First, though, comes a literature review. “If walking is a simple way of getting around, addressing the variety of environmental factors that may encourage or deter walking is neither that simple nor unanimous,” the co-authors state. “The complexity of relations between the built environment factors and walking behaviour, the role of individual perceptions, the importance of attitudes, lifestyle and transportation alternatives lead to an intricate frame of reciprocal influences that researchers are just starting to untangle” (283). There are several methodological issues that have yet to be addressed in relation to measuring that complex web of connections. The co-authors list many measurement methodologies that have emerged from different disciplines, but they suggest that in most of those tools, the evaluation criteria are dispersed and not clearly structured, “resulting in the use of a simple additive model of scores from arbitrarily selected evaluation criteria” (284). Determining the critical evaluation factors and their relative importance is a key issue (284). The co-authors accept research that identifies the so-called five C criteria—Connectedness, Convenience, Comfort, Conviviality (both aesthetic and social pleasure), and Conspicuousness—and add two more: Coexistence (“the extent to which the pedestrian and other transport modes can coexist at the same time and place with order and peace”) and Commitment (“the extent to which there is evidence of commitment, liability and responsibility towards the pedestrian environment, by local communities and administration”) (284). “As with other classifications, some of these factors have a fairly straightforward understand whilst others overlap,” they note (284).
Surprisingly, the co-authors acknowledge that “there is not a ‘one size fits all’ walkability measure. Instead it varies with trip purpose, pedestrian group and are subject to local conditions, being difficult to adopt results and tools originated in many different urban contexts,” particularly between European and North American or Australian cities (284). “In this paper, a participatory and CIS-based walkability assessment framework has been developed to put into practice the 7C’s layout, which is able to address different scales (city, neighbourhood and street), different pedestrian groups (adults, seniors, children, and people with mobility impairments), and different trip purposes (utilitarian, leisure),” the co-authors write. “The IAAPE framework was developed to support and be used by local authorities and urban planning and design practitioners, by involving the main stakeholders since the beginning of the assessment framework that is described in the next section” (285).
That next section introduces the IAAPE assessment framework. This section is a deep dive into their methodology, and while I’m sure it’s important, I’m also sure that I lack the statistical background to do more than get a headache here. For that reason, I skipped ahead to the results section of the article—which reflects on the validity of the IAAPE assessment tool, rather than the Lisbon neighbourhoods they tested using that tool. Then they discuss the validation of that tool in more detail, which involves a thorough explanation of what actually happens: “on-foot street auditing” by a team of six auditors (292) and a survey in which residents were asked to identify the most and least pedestrian-friendly streets in their neighbourhoods (293). The data produced by both methods were compared; the results of that comparison validate the process (293). It seems that the “on-foot street auditing” tended to agree with the perceptions of residents (294).
The co-authors suggest that issues like street cleanliness and maintenance, on the one hand, and traffic, on the other, are “the most important factors to rate negatively a street”; they are related to Commitment and Coexistence (294). They also suggest that measuring tools should “include a subtractive component to better reflect negative impacts on the perceived walkability” (294). In their conclusion, the co-authors suggest that the IAAPE assessment framework “brings new contributions for the walkability evaluation in six main aspects” (295). Again, this discussion is highly technical and not that helpful to me. On the one hand, I’m glad people are doing this research, and would be curious to see how Regina would score on a similar walkability study, although the co-authors warn against simply borrowing their methodology, which was designed for Lisbon, and using it to measure walkability in another city (295). Without that kind of detailed assessment, however, my sense of Regina’s walkability will remain idiosyncratic, anecdotal, and personal. I’m fine with that, and although social scientists would not be, I’m not that concerned, because I’m not a social scientist. In addition, the attractiveness indicators they co-authors consider seem to have little to do with attractiveness; they only consider sidewalk cleanliness, but surely the aspect that Southworth calls “path context” covers a lot more ground. To be honest, this article may have been less useful than I’d hoped, but it’s also true that I’m tired after a long day of reading and hoping for broad strokes and clear outcomes rather than a discussion of methodology. You can’t pick a winner every time.
Works Cited
Moura, Filipe, Paulo Cambra, and Alexandre B. Gonçalves. “Measuring Walkability for Distinct Pedestrian Groups with a Participatory Assessment Method: A Case Study in Lisbon.” Landscape and Urban Planning, no. 157, 2017, pp. 282-96. DOI:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2016.07.002.
Southworth, Michael. “Designing the Walkable City.” Journal of Urban Planning and Development, vol. 131, no. 4, 2005, pp. 246-57. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9488(2005)131:4(246)