بررسي و آزمون شاخص قابليت پياده روي و ارتباط آن با محيط ساخته شده شهر، نمونه موردي: شهر قروه

Investigation of a Walk-Ability Index and Its Relation with Environments, Case Study: Qourveh city

به دنبال رشد بيماري هاي قلبي عروقي و چاقي به ويژه در ميان سالخوردگان اهميت فضاي فيزيكي شهرها چند برابر گرديد و بنابراين نقش پياده روي بر روي بهداشت عمومي جامعه شهري مورد توجه قرار گرفت. در دهه گذشته شاهد رشد مطالعات در زمينه بهداشت عمومي، حمل ونقل و برنامه ريزي شهري بوده ايم كه اثر محيط ساخته شده بر فعاليت هاي بدني و به طور خاص نقش پياده روي را تحليل كرده اند. هرچند در كشورهاي توسعه يافته توجه قابل ملاحظه اي بر اين مطالعات وجود داشته است، مطالعات كمي در اين مورد در كشورهاي درحال توسعه مانند ايران وجود دارد. هدف اين مقاله تحليل معيارهاي عيني از محيط ساخته شده و ارتباط آن با پياده روي در سطح محلات شهر قروه است. نتايج به دست آمده از سطح خود-گزارشي پياده روي توسط افراد هدف (بالاي 65 سال) نشان مي دهد ساكنان محلاتي كه داراي قابليت پياده روي بالا هستند بدون در نظر گرفتن سطح كيفيت زندگي آن ها بيشتر از كساني كه در محلات با قابليت پياده روي كم زندگي مي كنند پياده روي مي كنند. لذا مي توان نتيجه گرفت كه محيط ساخته شده شهري مي تواند فرصت هايي را براي افرادي كه مشتاق پياده روي هستند فراهم آورد و همچنين مسيوليت برنامه ريزان شهري در خلق مكان هايي كه داراي قابليت پياده روي بيشتري باشند را تاكيد مي كند.

There are many studies about the relation between built environments and physical activities in the field of public health, transportation, and urban planning in the past decade. These researches emphasized on the strong relation between accessibility to parks, recreational and sport services, stores and shopping centers, residential density, and street connections. These studies applied two main approaches: objective and subjective. The literature of physical activities and its relation with the urban structure has attracted wide attention in developed countries and also in some large cities of developing countries. The present study has attempted to examine this issue in a medium sized city, Qourveh, by seeking the following aims: First, investigating the relation between qualities of built environments and walk-ability. Second, comparing the outcomes of built environments to the self-reported information extracted from elderly people of the city. There are different methods for studying built environment and walk-ability. These methods have many common points and each of them has concentrated on particular investigation with its main concern such as purpose of walking, net residential density, land use mix, street connection but there is a lack in main criteria for assessing parking space. In this research the net residential density is the ratio of residential units which are allocated for residential uses. The street intersection density covers the number of intersections in all streets in km2 and finally land use mix is calculated using the following entropy: K is the set of land uses; P is the ratio of land area in statistical blocks which belonged to a specific use. The land uses are divided into five uses of residential, commercial, recreational, institutional and others. If the amount of entropy index (between zero and one) tends toward one, it indicates the higher level of mixed land use in statistical block (and vice versa). Then the value of each criterion is normalized using Z-score. This study used four criteria for measuring walk-ability: intersection density of streets, parking spaces in neighborhoods, net residential density and land use mix which were collected and illustrated with the help of GIS. The results show that the neighborhood of 2-2 3 had the highest potential for walking and the neighborhood of 2-1-1 had the lowest walk-ability. The potential of walk-ability are ranked in three categories as low, moderate and high. To analyze the level of sensitivity in each method of classification, the methods of Geometric Interval, Equal interval and Natural breaks were applied separately. The results obtained from all three classifications show that 17 percent of the people live in neighborhoods with low walk-ability. The geometric interval shows that about 57 percent of the people live in neighborhoods which have low quality of life. To make a decision for selecting the neighborhoods for validity, a comparison study between neighborhoods with highest and lowest level of quality of life and walk-ability was done. Then each neighborhood was marked regarding to its quality of life and potential of walk-ability. The classifications of the neighborhoods show that only the neighborhood of 1-4-2 place in HW/HLQ. The neighborhoods of 3-3-3, 2-2-1 and 2-2-2 show the features of HW/ LLQ. Finally none of the areas obtain the quality of (LW/LLQ) and (LW/HLQ). This study followed the researches in the context of public health, transportation and urban planning which aimed to find the impacts of built environments on physical activities by focusing on a medium sized city (Qourveh). This study used Frank and his colleagues’ walk-ability indexes which consider walk-ability apart from the level of life quality (as an indicator of socio-economic status). Also, the elderly people who live in areas with higher potential for walking exercise more by walking regardless of their socio-economic status. The research reveals that using walk-ability indexes is highly depended to information availability and this issue confines different scale of the present study. Obviously a comprehensive information bank of built environment including commercial uses and quality of side-walks can provide better results. This study has some limitations such as lack of proper and valid information regarding to the detail of land uses; different concept of a neighborhood in the mind of residents and administrative definitions, selecting elderly group as the only target group due to the time limitation. Keywords: Physical space, Walkability, Public health, Neighborhood, Qourveh.