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Abstract
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Background and objective
Motorised traffic is growing rapidly in many African cities, creating barriers to the movement of pedestrians. This paper analyses the barrier effect of roads in Praia, the capital of Cabo Verde. We measured the barrier effect to potential trips to homes of other people and to food shops and analysed the distribution of the effect across areas and social groups. The paper contributes to the literature by: 1) quantifying the barrier effect of roads for the first time in an African city; 2) mapping the effect at the city level, and 3) developing indicators that account for land use (i.e. what is on the other side of the road).
Methods
We used spatial analysis to estimate, for each building in the city, two indicators: the proportions of the areas of other buildings and of food shops within 600m that are located across main roads. We then analysed the distribution of those indicators using maps, descriptive statistics, cumulative frequencies, bivariate associations, and regression models.
Results
In some areas, roads are estimated to curtail more than 70% of the walking accessibility potential of residents. The effect is higher in older informal settlements than in formally planned areas or newer informal settlements, and it disproportionately affects individuals aged 65+. The effect is lower for households with very high and very low socio-economic status than for those with high, medium, or low status. The indicators are robust to changes in the assumptions (e.g. type of roads included, maximum walking distance, attractiveness of destinations) and provide extra information, compared with simpler indicators (e.g. distance to roads or length of roads within a certain distance).
Language: en |