UNA-Based Research On Pedestrian Accessibility Of Public Spaces In Nanjing Old City

Pedestrian accessibility is a critical dimension of measuring the performance of urban public spaces,and it plays an important part in the quality of urban everyday activities.Pedestrian accessibility of urban public space is one of the often discussed topics among urban researchers,but most of them are examining it qualitatively and only a few do it quantitatively from the perspective of physical entities such as blocks,plots and streets.Yet this paper aims to fill the gap in existing researches on comprehensive assessment system of pedestrian accessibility of public space,and on the quantitative method of it.By way of UNA Toolbox along with literature review,comparative study,data analysis,and modeling,this paper proposes a S3 C comprehensive assessment system on pedestrian accessibility of public spaces,incorporating Service Area,Closest Facilities,Clusters,Centrality Indices.Centered around these different aspects,this paper quantitatively examines the pedestrian accessibility of public spaces in Nanjing Old City.The findings reveal the spatial inequity in the accessibility of public spaces in Nanjing Old City Area.First,the inequity exists between the city center and the peripheral areas that are close to the city wall.In the city center,the pedestrian accessibility of public facilities is higher but the accessibility of open spaces is lower,as opposed to the lower accessibility of public facilities but higher accessibility of open spaces in the peripheral areas.Second,the inequity also apprent between the eastern part of the old city and the western part.The public spaces are mainly locating on the western part of the city,while there is lack of public space in the eastern part.In addition,this paper also relies on Betweenness Tool in UNA Toolbox to further investigate the pedestrian networks of different public spaces.Based on the analysis,this research then summarizes the problems and proposes corresponding strategies to enhance the pedestrian accessibility of public spaces in Nanjing Old City.The significant contribution of this paper is to provide a systematic approach to assessing the pedestrian accessibility of urban public spaces,and set a precedent for the future researches on UNA Toolbox.