Detecting the Pedestrian Shed and Walking Route Environment of Urban Parks with Open-Source Data: A Case Study in Nanjing, China

Zhenqi Zhou and Zhen Xu
Additional contact information
Zhenqi Zhou: College of Landscape Architecture, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, China
Zhen Xu: College of Landscape Architecture, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, China

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 13, 1-16

Abstract: The propensity for visiting urban parks is affected by the park’s attractiveness and travel convenience, where walking provides the most basic and fair access. Walking routes from residences to parks, in terms of duration and perception, have received insufficient attention in the literature, particularly in the urban form context in China. Using the case study of Xuanwu Lake Park in Nanjing, we acquire walking routes from residences to the park through open-source data scraping in order to depict the pedestrian shed and pedestrian environment reasonably along these routes. The results show that the walking routes vary significantly with regards to distance, turns, street views, and so on. Proximity to urban parks, in terms of Euclidean distance, does not necessarily correspond to actual route distance, which may have a more direct influence on travel convenience and, hence, visiting propensity. Palpable differences in green visual ratio, image elements, and points of interest along these routes may also contribute to pedestrian environmental disparity. Analyzing data obtained from an online map provides a rapid and objective approach to detect pedestrian sheds and diagnose pedestrian environments, which can facilitate urban planners and policy makers in siting new parks and assessing the service capacity of parks.

Keywords: walking route; urban park; pedestrian shed; pedestrian environment; open-source data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/13/4826/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/13/4826/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:13:p:4826-:d:380417

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().