A Network Analysis Model to Measure the Walkability of Public Spaces

Abstract

The ongoing shift from auto-oriented urban planning policies has led to a growing interest in the creation and management of public spaces in cities. Public spaces can act as an attraction for a city and have been proven useful for urban revitalization. However, it is not uncommon for many of those spaces to stay underutilized. The aim of this paper is to create a walkability utility index for every road segment that, when correlated with the population density of each area, is used to define the overall accessibility of public space on foot. This culminates into a set of novel equipotential mapping samples applied to a set of urban segments of Greek cities. The results of this paper lead to a different way of evaluating existing city plans, offer a useful tool to authorities in implementing urban regeneration works aimed at improving citizen well-being and, a keyway of evaluating new public space development projects.