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This paper presents an analysis of walking indicators related to the structure of the road network, differentiated by measures of the quality, connectivity, and proximity of the road network. These measures were computed for various zones of the city of Rome and for the historical center of Lucca and Venice in Italy. The aims of the study were (a) to understand whether some measures were more suitable than others for describing the walkability (i.e., accessibility to walking) of an area, (b) to define the best single measure or the optimal combination of measures to describe the walkability of an area, (c) to define some benchmark values for the analyzed walkability measures, and (d) to obtain valuable guidelines to define a pedestrian-oriented road network. The results showed the importance of variables such as the number of nodes and the size of the blocks. Moreover, the results demonstrated that although single measures of connectivity were not self-explanatory for describing walkability, the combination of various measures could be more effective. Finally, the study derived the benchmark values of 3 to 6 nodes per hectare for the density of nodes, 0.5 to 0.9 hectare per block for the size of blocks, and 800 m for the maximum walking distance for a pedestrian-friendly, transit-oriented development.
Gori et al. (Wed,) studied this question.