Evaluating and Comparing Quality of Pedestrian Infrastructure and Services Across Developing Cities: Global Walkability Index.

Although a significant number of trips are made by foot in developing cities, pedestrian infrastructure, amenities, and services are often neglected in municipal planning and budgets. Since helping city planners understand the scope and extent of local pedestrian conditions relative to other cities would be a positive step towards improving the quality of the pedestrian environment, this paper presents the processes and results in the development of a walkability index, which would rank cities across the world based on the safety, security, and convenience of their pedestrian environments. The process involved the development of a list of Index variables by studying existing tools for evaluating non-motorized transport and consultation with experts from a variety of related fields. After evaluating various methods for survey area selection, field data collection, and data aggregation, a prototype of the index was developed, survey materials and field tests were conducted in cities throughout the world, including Beijing, Washington, and Delhi including a full-scale pilot in Ahmedabad, India, where 65 volunteers from the Center for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT) conducted physical infrastructure, public agency, and pedestrian surveys in eight neighborhoods, which were selected using a random spatial sampling method. Results from these tests and pilot were used to refine the Index composition and data collection methodologies, resulting in a two-pronged tool. Since, out of practical necessity, the Global Walkability Index?s robustness is limited by its simplicity (the Index is primarily intended to generate awareness of walkability as an important issue), an additional set of Extended Survey Materials was developed to gather more detailed, site specific data for use in developing investment and policy proposals. The Index is a tool that could be easily and cheaply implemented throughout developing cities to raise awareness of walkability as a critical issue, and more importantly, provide cities with the data and information they need to develop informed investment plans and policy decisions.