Assessment and Policy Interventions for Neighborhood Walkability Improvement

Abstract

One of the most common forms of physical activity is walking which is the mother of all the modes of transport which provides inexpensive and equal transportation options to improve residents’ health and quality of life. Due to several associated advantages such as wellbeing of residents and improving health, reducing air pollution, traffic congestion and decreasing energy consumption, walking has become an interesting topic for researchers. To have modern cities with highly efficient transportation facilities which support walking, cities and neighbourhoods are trying to promote a pedestrian-friendly environment. As a result, walkability is a sustainable concept to improve the liveability of growing cities that describes the level of capability of the built environments to support walking for multiple purposes including transport, leisure and exercise purposes. Although measurement of walkability includes several methods and approaches, this research has emphasized on the walkability index as well as neighbourhoods features that influence the willingness of people to walk. Since Lucknow is not considered a walkable city, it is valuable to investigate how this city has tackled this issue. Therefore, for better interpretation, one such neighbourhood in Lucknow was selected to examine the level of walkability and the factors affect that