Evaluation And Study On The Walkability Of Built Environment In Urban Neighborhood Under The Perspective Of Needs

President Xi Jinping has indicated in the report at the 19 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China that Chinese people in the new era has shifted the “ever-growing material and cultural needs” to the “ever-growing needs for a better life”.“Ever-growing needs for a better life” reflects the people-centered idea as well as the original intention and mission of the Communists.It is an overall diversified needs of people’s livelihood.People look forward to improvement of life quality and environment,so that high-quality development of urban environment becomes pressing and urgent.With rapid development of cities and prevalence of vehicles,car transport has gradually replaced walking,leading to more and more serious environmental pollution and health issues.Cities are the largest gathering places of Chinese population and the subject of human settlement construction.Residential areas are the places where residents work and live as well as the fundamental cells of human settlement construction.Walk,as a basic means of transport,has a positive effect on reducing pollution,improving environmental quality and uplifting residents’ health.Differences in built environment walkability in residential areas directly influence residents’ travel choices.Under this background,evaluating built environment walkability of residential areas,an indicator of the quality of life and travel,becomes a new important research field of urban planning.Urban planning is a traditional field of planning work that stresses on making the best use of the circumstances.It is the ultimate problem of improving residential quality to further intensify the idea of elaborately designing residential areas.Quality is a diversified and multi-level concept;different classes have different desires and demands.Better responding to residents’ demands will be the focus of future design for residential areas.What’s more,it is the development demand of the new era and the people-centered value guidance.In view of this,the thesis attempts to theoretically analyze how built environment adapts to residents’ needs for walk transport from the micro aspect of urban residential areas.Taking 5 types of residential areas in downtown Wuhan as example(including historical residential areas of capitalist economy era,unit residential areas of planned economy era,old residential areas of reform and opening-up policy era,newly-built economic residential areas at the early stage of market economy,and newly built high-end residential areas at the development stage of market economy),an empirical study is performed with methods like GIS,site investigation and questionnaire survey,so as to get basic data about influence factors of demands for built environment walkability.With Pearson Correlation model,Kano model and modified IPA approach,we analyzed “prior demand” factors that influence built environment walkability of different urban residential areas.And then we proposed differentiated planning strategies that are of significant realistic guidance to improve walkability,intensify residents’ preference to walk,and promote sustainable social development and decision making.The major research results of this thesis are seen as below.(1)By referring to the research on the relationship between people’s demands and built environment in Marx’s demand theory,Maslow’s demand theory,environmental psychology,environmental behavior,social ecology and attractive quality theory,we put forward a theory to assess walkability demands for built environment in residential areas.This thesis divided residents’ walkability demands for built environment into two dimensions,material demands and spiritual demands,which can be further divided into 5 levels,specifically including demands for accessibility of destination,demands for convenience of routines,demands for traffic safety during walk,demands for social interaction during walk,and demands for aesthetic walk environment.This provides theoretical basis for the selection of demand influence factors and their characterizations.Under theoretical guidance,domestic and foreign research results are summarized,and the high-frequency demand factors selected.This research initially selected 50 demand factors within 12 criterion layers under 5 target layers through Delphi technique and group discussion.(2)The residential areas in Wuhan were divided into 5 types according to time sequence and characteristics of their development.Taking residents in the 5 types of residential areas as research subjects,this research carried out surveys on social attributes and residents’ demands for present built environment walkability and collected data about measurements of material demands as well as spiritual demands.With the methods of Pearson Correlation,Kano model and modified IPA approach,this research discoveries that “prior demand” factors of built environment walkability in 5 residential areas have obviously different effects,and “prior demand” factors and demand hierarchy are in need of more accurate and in-depth improvement.They are associated with residents’ high demands for built environment walkability but perform poorly,and they have strong correlations with walk frequency.This research shows that “social demand” is related to the demand for improvement of historical residential areas at the capitalist economy era;“aesthetic demand” to the demand for improvement of unit residential areas at the planned economy era;“demand for safety” to demand for improvement of old residential areas at the reform and opening-up policy era;“demand for convenience to the demand for improvement the newly built economic residential areas at the early stage of the market economy;and "demand for accessibility” to the demand for improvement of newly-built high-end residential areas at the development stage of the market economy.(3)According to different “prior demand” factors in the 5 types of residential areas,the demands for built environment walkability are assessed.Research shows that comprehensive index of demands for built environment walkability in historical residential areas built at the capitalist economy era is 0.902;the indexes of Sande Community,Dingyu Community,Yanchang Community,Lianbao Community,Jiqing Community and Tanhualin residential areas are below average,suggesting that they are the focus of improvement.The comprehensive index of the demands for built environment walkability in unit residential areas built at the planned economy era is 0.859.Indexes of New Workers’ Village,Renshou Community,West Zhiyin Community,New Dianli Village,117 Neighborhood Community,and Qifa Community are below average,suggesting that they are the focus of improvement.The comprehensive index of the demands for built environment walkability in old residential areas built at reform and opening-up policy era is 0.794.The indexes of Hubianfang Community,Qiliyicun Community,Yanzhi road Community,Dagedi lake Community,Wofoan Community and New Bridge Community are below average,suggesting that they are the focus of improvement.The comprehensive index of the demands for built environment walkability in economic residential areas built at the early stage of the market economy is 0.764.The indexes of Hankou Garden I Community,Fuqiangtian Garden Community,Hankou Spring Community,Hanbo Garden Community,Fudicuiwei New Town Community,Shuian New Town B Community,Jiangnan Spring Town II Community,Jindi Sunny Town Community and Huada Homeland Community are below average,suggesting that they are the focus of improvement.The comprehensive index of walkability in high-end residential areas built at the development stage of the market economy is 0.748.The indexes of Baibuting Modern Town II Community,Jinhe Golden Bridge Community,Lanting Xiyuan Community,Shimao Jinxiu III Community and Donghu High-end Town Community are below average,suggesting that they are the focus of improvement.Based on the above results,differentiated planning strategies are proposed to meet residents’ differentiated demands for walkability in the 5 types of residential areas.The thesis studies the walkability of built environment in residential areas from the perspective of residents’ demands,with the goal of building a theoretical system that can quantitatively evaluate the demands of urban residents for walkability of built environment.The findings of this research promises to be applied to the 5 types of residential areas in Wuhan.This research,in a way,expands and diversifies the perspectives and ideas of walkability evaluation of built environments in urban residential areas,and therefore plays a positive role in improving walkability construction of built environments.However,due to limited time and knowledge of the author as well as multiple disciplines involved therein,this research may be subject to certain deficiencies in terms of the evaluation over the demands for walkability of different age groups and residents with different trip purposes,expansion of different types of residential areas,discussion on multiple comprehensive factors,and planning strategies for built environment walkability.