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The Walkability Wiki: Methods for assessing walkability in india

3 Scope

I really like the idea of eat cake first (Cetinkaya-Rundel 2018), which means at the heart of this book’s approach is the belief that it’s best to dive in and get started with the task at hand, even if that means adopting a “good enough” approach initially.

There may be more complex or nuanced workflows available, and I’ll be sure to point those out as well. There might even be better ways to derive insights or understand results, but the methods discussed here are enough to get started with. My goal is to provide you with the quickest and most straightforward path to achieving your desired outcome.

This also means no prior knowledge of GIS or programming is required to follow along. Wherever needed, I will link to appropriate guide material to reduce redundancy of writing it here again. What I will show is how to use those results in a real-life context. There are some things to keep in mind while using this book, so that you make the most of it.

3.1 What to expect

This guidebook will:

  1. Demonstrate how to combine methods for better understanding walkability.
  2. Present real-life case studies to illustrate how this information can be practically used.
  3. Provide resources for urban planning professionals, academics, and anyone interested in the field to conduct their own research.
  4. Provide a framework for assessing walkability and encourages readers to draw their own conclusions based on their research and analysis

But it won’t:

  1. Aim to provide an exhaustive list of measures or a comprehensive review of research.
  2. Claim to offer a one-size-fits-all solution for assessing walkability.
  3. Provide technical guidance on every aspect of GIS and data analysis, only practical techniques and code snippets.
  4. Aim to be prescriptive or offer definitive answers on what makes a city or street walkable

3.2 Who is this for?

This book does assume you have some understanding of walkability audits and assessments, and what you are looking for is methods to fill gaps in that knowlege. Little-to-no prior knowledge is required for following the methods discussed in this book. You might be a:

  1. Urban planner or designer, for whom this book offers insights on how to assess walkability in Indian cities and neighborhoods.

  2. Community advocate, for whom this book provides a framework for promoting walkable neighborhoods and understanding the factors that make them successful.

  3. A researcher, academic, or student in urban planning, public health, or related fields, for whom this book is a great resource for gaining a comprehensive understanding of walkability and its impact on the people that use them.

3.3 How to read this book

Much like The Machete Order, I suggest the following flow to get through this book, which will guide you through the methods and concepts presented in a logical sequence.

  1. Learn how to understand your site through the methods described in Section 8.1. This will help you understand important ways to understand the built space.
  2. Plan your field visits or conduct a preliminary virtual tour through the methods outlined in Section 12 and Section 14.2.
  3. Conduct interviews and make comprehensive notes & observations about the site and its people through the methods in Section 14.1, Section 13.0.3, and Section 13.0.2.
  4. Delve into quantitative analysis and learn how to analyse your qualitative data through visualizations in Section 7, Section 11.1, Section 14.3.2 and Section ??.
  5. Visualize your results and presenting findings by looking at examples in Section ??.

For any important steps in an analysis process, screenshots and text is presented clearly. References to anything within a software or inside an image is Formatted like so. I have done these analyses on a Windows 10 laptop, so if you have any errors specifc to this OS, rest assured they can be searched for on Google. If you are using Mac OS and are unable to troubleshoot an error, I recommend shutting down your laptop and getting a Windows.