Urban neighborhood walkability analysis

Background. Several authors have studied the link between built environment and physical activity, defining specific walkability indices (WI); these tools are mainly based on archival data sets, analyzed with GIS, which do not consider the environmental quality of the context. Aim of this study is to design a method to evaluate the walkability of an urban neighborhood, based on direct observation. Method. A tool, called the Walking Suitability Index of the Territory (T-WSI) has been developed. It measures the walkability of each street of an environmental area. It includes 12 weighted indicators subdivided into 4 categories: practicability, safety, urbanity, pleasurableness. A value is assigned to each indicator according to the following scale of values: excellent (100), good (75), poor (35) and bad (0). Data collected in each street are inserted in an algoritm to perform weighted sums and to aggregate indicators, up to define the final index, in which the length of each street is also considered. The tool has been applied in Rieti, a small city (47,153 inhabitans) of Central Italy, involving 79% of the city’s environmental areas (19). Average scores (min-max) are analysed. Results. The overall average T-WSI was 48.5 (25.2-61.2), mediocre values of the adopted scale, highlighting gaps in the design for pedestrian use of public spaces. Although the streets showed good average scores for the pleasurableness (62.8) and the practicability (61.6), safety obtained the worst average scores (32.2), mainly for the low score obtained by the following indicators: protection from vehicle speed (20.9), inadequate crossings (32.9) and insufficient lighting (42.6). Conclusions. The T-WSI – method, easy to use, sensible and reproducible - allowed to underline several streets’ criticalities that could hinder walkability. Therefore it could be a good basis to support public administrations in the decision-making related to health policy and local development to encourage physical activity.