The mainstream research about sustainable development recommends walking as a top ranked active transportation and the most favorable healthy mode. This recommendation makes designing and implementing walkable communities a main goal for urban transportation planners and engineers as well as for public health specialists. This study takes a district consisting of three neighborhoods in Nablus City –namely An-Najah University District—to investigate the extent to which the built environment is pedestrian friendly. In order to answer this research question and to test the corresponding research hypotheses, the researcher conducted a field survey covering 23 Km of arterial, collector and local roads. The survey was designed to examine the space available for pedestrians along each side of the all road segments and the surrounding built environment from four aspects: (1) connectivity; (2) safety; (3) convenience; and (4) aesthetic aspects. A special Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tool was designed to conduct the analysis and to represent the results spatially. The results show low quality built environment in the four aspects of assessment and a significant spatial variation in the walkability scores across the study area and among the different classes of roads. The study is concluded with three types of recommendations to the decision and policy makers, the municipality engineers and urban planners, and the researchers to work together to improve the walkability at different spatial level.

Conference Title

2nd International Civil Engineering Conference in Palestine

Conference Country

Palestine

Conference Date

Nov. 25, 2019 - Nov. 26, 2019

Conference Sponsor

Palestine Engineering Association

Additional Info

Conference Website