Attributes influencing walkability of neighbourhoods at restored historical urban contexts

Abstract

Planning and designing for walking is essential for promoting a healthful public life, creating sustainable neighbourhoods, and boosting a community's social and economic well-being. Consequently, there is an increasing need for information about the built environment's walkability. The historically restored urban contexts and their neighbourhoods provide many opportunities to research walkability as they functioned like an urban laboratory with unique neighbourhoods with traditional settlements and showed more walkability than modern haphazard suburbs. This research was conducted to identify the main attributes and the prominence of selected attributes that contribute to uplifting walkability in historically restored urban contexts to enhance its neighbourhood public life. Galle Fort, one of the most significant historically restored urban contexts in Sri Lanka, was taken up as the case study, and five selected walkability attributes were tested using five selected streets via self-study, mapping and questionnaires using the Likert Scaling method and a Ranking system. The collected data were analyzed through qualitative and quantitative methodologies, a Mathematical Modeling Method and a real people's perception evaluating method to get the outcome. The results showed that the most crucial attribute affecting walkability was "scale and variety", and the "absence of detractors" and "softness" also play vital roles in promoting walkability in historically restored urban contexts. Specially attributes related to the built envelope on either side of the streets crucially influence street walkability. The building needs to respond to the street and the pedestrian so that they feel comfortable with their walkability on streets and the public space around them. Creating walkable and livable neighbourhoods requires careful coordination between people and building morphology.