Identifying and measuring urban design qualities related to walkability – special reference to jaffna down town

Abstract

Walkability is an important concept in sustainable urban design and active living life. Walkability and walking behavior of the people are being decided by the significant physical features and urban design qualities. This research mainly focuses on identified and measured urban design qualities related to Walkability -special reference to Jaffna downtown. Eight urban design qualities have been selected for the subsequent study. The main objective of this research is "Evaluate how urban design qualities influence in the Walkability to identify and measuring selected urban design qualities such as Imageability, Legibility, Transparency, Enclosure, Human scale, Linkage, Complexity and Coherence. Significant physical features and Urban design qualities related physical elements like courtyard, plazas, water bodies, parks, non - rectangular buildings, buildings with identifiers, street furniture, windows, wall, building colours etc. were collected and measured through Photographic survey, Walking through method, Mind map and Interview with people. Urban design qualities related physical elements are poor in condition within the downtown and they are not contributing to the Walkability. Only hospital street is enhanced the Walkability through related urban design qualities. The major urban design qualities related physical elements such as square, plazas, parks, major landscape features, outdoor dining, street trees are unavailability within the town and present setup of the long sight lines, street wall, windows and building accent colours are also not upgrading the urban design qualities. Finally, Poor and unavailability of physical elements of the urban design qualities is the major reason to the low Walkability and Walking behaviour of the people. Therefore, urban design qualities related physical elements have to enhance to increase the Walkability. Mainly related institutions like UDA, JMC, RDA and Archeology department will prepare and design to upgrade the urban design qualities.