TRANSACTIONAL APPROACH FOR WALKABLE URBAN SPACES: HIERARCHY OF WALKING NEEDS

Abstract

This body of research is in need of a transdisciplinary, multilevel theoretical model that may help to explain how macro urban scale characteristics, human perception and micro urban scale characteristics affect walking behaviour. The model aims to question the walkability according to spatial, individual, group and regional characteristics as macro urban scale characteristics, which come to human perception. Human questions synthesise these characteristics and decisions to walk. Then the micro scale characteristics become effective on decision of walking and its type. Some factors are more prominent in this process than others. These factors have been suggested as walking needs in a hierarchy, which are: Feasibility, Safety, Accessibility, Usefulness, Physical Comfort and Social Environment/Sociability. This model can: (a) serve as a framework to understand the variables in an existing research; (b) offer hypotheses for how factors from macro/micro scale urban characteristics affect peoples' decision to walk, and (c) guide designing/re-designing environments.