Walkable Streets Analysis-Pacoima City Case
Introduction
Pacoima is a city which is 7 square miles and has a total population of 103,689 people.By identifying and visiting the city of Pacoima helps someone to understand the area and its nature, by understanding the nature of the area will help someone to determine if the area is a better place for occupation. To get the proper area analysis it is significant to go check the work as far as aspects e.g. walkability of the location are concerned. Going through the analysis of the data got after paying a visit to the location is very important aspect when analysing the state of the city. It is the state of the city that determines whether the areas safe for living that is in terms of physical factors and social factors which is known as the city form.
Walkability is defined as a measure of how the area is friendly for walking. Walkability has many economic benefits, environmental benefits and health benefits. Walkability is influenced by a number of factors; these factors include the absence or the presence of quality sidewalks, footpaths or other right of way of pedestrians, road and traffic conditions, building accessibility, and land use patterns among others.
Additionally, walkability has proved to have more community health benefits and individually, those activities appears to increase the number of friends and the number of people to associate with in life and also social interaction at large. Carbon monoxide emissions will be reduced because when people prefer walking opposed to driving there will be less emission of carbon gases.
Walkability also has economic benefits apart from other benefits; this includes the accessibility; it saves cost to both the public and individuals. It will increase the use of land and there will be no land to be wasted, increase in liveability and also the economic benefits which will be found by improving public and individual health and economic developing among the other benefits. The benefits are mostly guaranteed to the entire city not only limited to certain routes that are specialized. According to the American institute for cancer research and the world cancer research fund they released their report that the people should be encouraged walking, because that walking will decrease the cancer infection.
Literature Review
Walkability is that measure of how a particular area is friendly to walking. It has health-wise, economic and environmental benefits. There are many factors that influence walkability which include land use patterns, building accessibility, traffic and conditions of the road, quality of the footpaths, other pedestrian rights of way. As a result, the presence of walkable streets is a crucial idea in sustainable urban design (Abley, 2005).