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Are you interested in how walkability and quality of life are connected?

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Our summary today works with the article titled Quantifying life quality as walkability on urban networks: The case of Budapest from 2019 by Luis Natera, David Deritei, Anna Vancso, and Orsolya Vasarhelyi, presented at the International Conference on Complex Networks and Their Applications. This is a great preparation to our next interviewee in episode 138, Luis Natera, who talks a lot about urban mobility systems in the interview as well. Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how we can quantify urban walkability. This article presents how to measure urban network walkability and its impact on quality of urban life, through the case of Budapest.

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Welcome to today’s What is The Future For Cities podcast and its Research episode; my name is Fanni, and today I will introduce a research paper by summarising it. The episode really is just a short summary of the original paper, and, in case it is interesting enough, I would encourage everyone to check out the whole paper. Stay tuned until because I will give you the 3 most important things and some questions which would be interesting to discuss.

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During the 20^th century, most cities have evolved to accommodate a car-centric vision, prioritising motorised traffic. From a liveability perspective, this situation is not optimal, because the automobile infrastructure dominated and defines the walkable area, increasing car traffic, air pollution and deteriorating walkable conditions. The concept of walkability is an important factor to consider in connection with liveability.

Liveability refers to an environment from an individual perspective which includes a vibrant, attractive and secure environment for people to live, work and play and encompasses good governance, a competitive economy, high quality of living and environmental sustainability. Thus, in a liveable city there must be an emphasis not only on sustainable transportation and built environment to reduce the harm on nature, but also encouraging citizens to walk for supporting their physical and mental well-being. However, walkability is more complex than we would think. Walking should be an available, safe and well-connected mode of transportation, and at the same time interesting and comfortable – to have the feeling of the streets as outdoor living rooms.

Urban walkability is sustained by the infrastructure network. The network approach can help to identify street patterns, evolutions, urban morphologies, and how the street connectivity impacts pedestrian volume. Measuring walkability needs to factor in various aspects, like safety and security, convenience, attractiveness, connectedness, air pollution, travel costs and so on.

Thus the authors proposed a data-driven approach to quantify life quality based on walkability. They targeted Budapest but their methods can be generalised to any other city. The data comes from different sources, and the investigated network contains all the sidewalks and pedestrian designated infrastructure. The data is grouped into six categories: family support, education, health care and sport, culture, nightlife, and the environment. The life quality of a person is largely subjective and hard to quantify. However, it is both intuitive and has been scientifically proven that the environment and personal well-being strongly correlate. Thus, using environmental factors as proxies, life quality and liveability becomes quantifiable. The main considered environmental factors are the availability of services and amenities, the quality of the infrastructure, environmental factors and safety.

Budapest is the capital of Hungary, sitting on both sides of its river, the Danube. Not surprisingly, life quality is better in the inner districts, especially in the case of nightlife and culture. Even though the city has an interesting history, certain services, like education and health care are provided due to regulation, but private services show a more inequal picture. The results also highlight that the categorical quality indexes are highly correlated, meaning that less liveable neighbourhoods are constant regardless of the amenity category and well-performing neighbourhoods do not change either. This is due to the lack of amenities and the relatively high walking distances in the suburbs. Furthermore, the compact city concept focuses on building more sustainable and liveable cities while designing practical neighbourhoods where citizens can maintain everyday life without a car. Since the walkability of a neighbourhood is highly correlated with its liveability, both long distances and the lack of amenities affects suburban habitat lives negatively. This is also the case in Budapest’s suburbs.

The authors also investigated how real estate prices reflect the recognition of a neighbourhood’s characteristics: more desirable places are more expensive due to the underlying assumption of providing a higher quality of life. The categories, sport and health care, education, family support, night life, and culture are all positively correlated with the real estate prices, except the environment. The life quality in Budapest is much higher in densely populated downtown districts, which lack of green surface and suffers from high air pollution due to heavy traffic. Locals of Budapest have traditionally valued the downtown areas due to closeness of CBD, good access to public transport, and vital city life. However, in recent years there are new challenges: over-tourism and gentrification lead real estate prices to sky rocket in the centre.

As the findings show, Budapest is highly centralised and the quality of life highly correlates with real estate prices which possibly lead to even more inequalities in the future. This spatial discrimination with longer travelling time, less fulfilling environment and potential segregation reduces the chances of upward mobility and the quality of life of individuals.

The authors proposed a method to quantify life quality as a function of walkability on urban networks. They used open data to highlight the inequalities between neighbourhoods and districts and proved that real estate prices reflect the life quality. This data-driven approach can help decision-makers to tackle social and environmental challenges better. Designing compact, liveable neighbourhoods, considering also the upcoming environmental crises is the number one priority of many cities worldwide.

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What was the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Do you have any follow up question? Let me know on Twitter at WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the transcripts and show notes are available! Additionally, I will highly appreciate if you consider subscribing to the podcast or on the website. I hope this was an interesting paper for you as well, and thanks for tuning in!

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Finally, as the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

1. Investigating urban walkability can highlight important factors to consider for urban decision-makers and designers for improving the quality of life.
2. Since the walkability of a neighbourhood is highly correlated with its liveability, both long distances and the lack of amenities affects suburban habitat lives negatively.
3. Designing compact, liveable neighbourhoods, considering also the upcoming environmental crises is the number one priority of many cities worldwide.

Additionally, it would be great to talk about the following questions:

1. What do you think about walkability regarding urban quality of life?
2. How often do you walk in your city? How do you think walkability contributes to your city’s overall liveability?
3. What do you especially like in your city regarding walkability?
4. How would you enhance walkability in your city? What is missing, can be improved?

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