Development of a Measuring Tool for Walkability in the Street Scale - the case study of Hamburg

Abstract

The humanistic approach is a key principle of any urban development with the aim of urban quality improvement. A healthy environment is fundamentally associated with walkable communities. According to a study in 2016 from the Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR) and the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge, the health benefits of walking and cycling override the negative impacts of air pollution on health even in highly polluted cities. Additionally, planning walkable cities promote low carbon emission developments. Measuring walkability of the streets makes it possible for the planners and experts to address the quality of the built environment. This paper reports a practical assessment tool, developed in a master thesis, based on decisive walkability features by applying a weighting system to score those features in order to achieve a tangible outcome. For this reason, an examined weighting system from a previous study led by the Institute of Urban Planning and the University of Duisburg-Essen is optimized. Afterward, the proposed tool is applied for measuring the walkability in a selection of different streets in Hamburg, in order to answer the questions of how these Hamburg's streets differ in their degree of walkability and how their walkability can be improved.