As walkable neighborhoods have grown in popularity, the supply of these neighborhoods has not kept up with the demand. However, the supply could increase through the use of planning tools related to zoning, land use, and urban form. While it seems as though single-family and low-density development would work against walkable neighborhoods, relatively few studies have examined this empirically. Thus, this paper seeks to address this research gap by applying descriptive, factor, cluster, and spatial regression analysis to data from six U.S. cities: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Miami, Phoenix, and Seattle. As expected, the following factors turned out to be significantly associated with walkable access to amenities: flexible, mixed use, commercial (including downtown, neighborhood scale, and sometimes big box), multifamily residential, and pedestrian-friendly residential (e.g., higher density, sidewalks, street trees, narrower streets, lower speed limits). Also as expected, single-family residential zoning (especially when isolated from other zoning categories) and low-density building characteristics were inversely related to walkable access. The paper concludes with an argument that the zoning types, land uses, and urban-form characteristics that were significantly associated with walkability should be extended to address the undersupply of walkable neighborhoods.
Language: en
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