Walkability study in the planned residential areas of Dhaka in relation to spatial network

Abstract

Dhaka, being the ninth largest and the fastest growing mega city of the world by population, experiences 62% of daily trips conducted by walking. Throughout the city mostly urban poor population makes their daily trips by walking as they have only few or no alternatives. However, walkability in general is beneficial for health, social and economic aspects of every citizen; and also supportive to environment. City planning authority in Dhaka has taken initiative for preparing the built environment in convenience to the pedestrian behaviors in Planned Residential areas. Such initiatives concentrate on the improvement of streetscape only, whereas walkability depends on many other physical and non-physical factors among which Spatial Network determining the choice of movement is most important. In this research condition of walkability and the reasons behind the preference of walking on a number of streets in the planned residential area (Gulshan and Banani) was investigated. Originally conceived and designed for the high income group of the society, the serene environment of Gushan and Banani residential areas are gradually disrupted by the invasion of commercial functions, which eventually degraded the overall livability of these residential areas. In order to ensure Gulshan-Banani area as livable residential area walkability needs to be enhanced; as walkability is an essential component of Livability. The overall aim of this research was to determine the relationship between walkability and the spatial network of the planned residential areas in spite of the differences in the physical structure of planned areas and the evolving changes in the structure of the city within which the area is embedded. Space Syntax was used here to analyze the spatial network and population count was undertaken to identify the users’ preferences. In brief, this research tried to find out the walkability of the Gulshan-Banani residential area, with the aim to ensure livability in these residential areas. From syntactic analysis, pedestrian movement pattern and land use survey, it has been identified that, spatial pattern have been very much interrelated with the functional and current movement pattern within Gulshan-Banani residential area. As a result, huge amount of pedestrian movement has been observed in the study area, most of whom are non-residents. In such a situation, effort should be given in formulating policies to encourage local residents as being pedestrians, while policies should also be there in convenience to the non-resident pedestrians in order to encourage this new phenomenon prevailing in the planned residential areas of Dhaka.