How to Ensure Walkable Pedestrian Paths? An Assessment in the Largo Felice Area of Cagliari (Italy)

Improve walkability, and therefore the capacity to provide safe and accessible walking opportunities, has emerged as a crucial topic especially for post-pandemic cities, seeking to create inclusive and liveable urban spaces. In this direction, a user-centred planning approach prioritises the creation of pleasant and accessible walking environments, which are essential for achieving a sustainable urban development. The physical features of the urban areas must be carefully designed and implemented to enhance the living standards, safety, and inclusiveness, also for vulnerable users. Based on the Geographic Information System (GIS) tools, this paper provides an analytical-assessment approach for evaluating walkability in urban settings, in order to identify the significant properties of urban infrastructures. The methodology is characterised by an integrated approach based on a survey process, including remote observations. The evaluation of pedestrian paths’ performances considers the most influencing attributes (e.g., sidewalk width; visibility; crosswalk provision) which have been identified and evaluated for the case study of Largo Felice in Cagliari, Italy. To obtain an overall assessment in terms of safety, approachability, and enjoyment, each of these indicators has been analysed by aggregating and cross-referencing the detected attributes. The results highlight critical issues associated with the study area, that hinder the approachability and safety of pedestrian pathways, e.g., architectural barriers, discontinuities, poor visibility. Finally, the paper provides some recommendations for improving walkability in urban areas. Future research developments will include the assessment of further walkability attributes to perform a comprehensive analysis of an extended study area and in-field survey to validate the results.