Walkability as the key element of urban planning within the Healthy Cities concept (systematic review)

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Abstract

The purpose of the study. The purpose of this work is the exploration and generalization of scientific researches on walkability to determine its advantages as an element of public policy in human-centered cities.

Over the past fifty years, the world community has actively discussed the issue of healthy and sustainable urban development planning, which has gained particular relevance with the recent World Health Organization publication of the “Healthy Cities: An Effective Approach to a Rapidly Changing World” concept (2020). One of the Healthy Cities approach goals is to promote healthy urban planning and design centered on human well-being (unlike prevalent in the past vehicle orientation), and the main component of such planning is pedestrianization or walkability. The systematic reviews and meta-analyses reporting method (PRISMA) were used in the review. The search was carried out in the bibliographic databases Elibrary, PubMed, MEDLINE, Scopus, Google Scholar. The study of the structure, types, and relationship between pedestrianization and the type of urban planning revealed the global advantages of creating walkable areas, such as maintaining the physical, mental and social health of citizens, increasing social capital, and improving the city’s ecological and economic atmosphere.

Conclusion. Thus the promoting walkability was concluded to be a public policy as a relatively simple and highly effective way to benefit in the short, medium, and long term. This fact ultimately makes pedestrianization one of the most important tools for healthy urban planning and design.

About the authors

Nadezhda A. Vosheva

Research Institute for Healthcare Organization and Medical Management of Moscow Healthcare Department

Author for correspondence.
Email: voshevana@zdrav.mos.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0001-6546-3530

Analyst, Research Institute for Healthcare Organization and Medical Management, Moscow, 115088, Russia.

e-mail: VoshevaNA@zdrav.mos.ru

Russian Federation

Natalya N. Kamynina

Research Institute for Healthcare Organization and Medical Management of Moscow Healthcare Department

Email: noemail@neicon.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-0925-5822
Russian Federation

Ekaterina O. Korotkova

Research Institute for Healthcare Organization and Medical Management of Moscow Healthcare Department

Email: noemail@neicon.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0001-5473-4796
Russian Federation

Dmitriy V. Voshev

Research Institute for Healthcare Organization and Medical Management of Moscow Healthcare Department

Email: noemail@neicon.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0001-9216-6873
Russian Federation

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Copyright (c) 2020 Vosheva N.A., Kamynina N.N., Korotkova E.O., Voshev D.V.

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