Article Measuring Walkability with Street Connectivity and Physical Activity: A Case Study in Iran Pouya Molaei 1 , Liyaning Tang 2 and Mary Hardie 2,* 1 Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Tabriz Islamic Art University, Tabriz 51368, Iran; [email protected] 2 School of Built Environment, Western Sydney University, Penrith, NSW 2750, Australia; [email protected] * Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.: +61-2-4736-0921 Abstract: The walkability of urban areas is an important criterion related to the level of physical activity and public health of citizens. This research aims to measure this parameter in Golsar town located in Rasht, Iran. Two methods were used in this research: Street connectivity and International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ). The principal variables of street connectivity were measured in four districts of Golsar by Geographic Information System (GIS) to rank each one. Then, the acquired results were compared by the average walking time of the respondents of the questionnaire. The comparison explicitly indicated that there is a strong positive correlation between the measures of street connectivity and people’s tendency to walk. As well, District 1 had the highest value of connectivity and the highest average time for walking amongst the four districts. This supports the contention that walkability and the level of outdoor physical activities of people in each district are undoubtedly under the influence of the variables of street connectivity. Nevertheless, the evaluation of other indexes such as proximity, land use mix, safety, and density in Golsar, in future research. can expand our perception of the walkability of this region. Keywords: walkability; street connectivity; physical activity; healthy city; IPAQ Citation: Molaei, P.; Tang, L.; Hardie, M. Measuring Walkability with Street Connectivity and Physical Activity: A Case Study in Iran. World 2021, 2, 1. Introduction 49–61. https://doi.org/ Walking is one of the affordable, major, and most elementary types of physical activ- 10.3390/world2010004 ity [1], that provides a sustainable means of transport and leisure [2]. Walking can be done alone at any time and can be embedded in our routine plans without special equipment Received: 4 December 2020 or clothes, or consumption of fossil fuels. It is the most popular and inexpensive habitual Accepted: 5 January 2021 Published: 18 January 2021 practice among adults of all ages [3–6]. Not only is regular walking recommended to keep people healthy through the prevention of many diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral obesity, and diabetes, but it also associated with positive social interactions, economic with regard to jurisdictional claims in benefits, and their mental health [7–9]. Besides, the US National Research Council and published maps and institutional affil- US Institute of Medicine [10] reported: “The factors in the physical environment that are iations. important to health include harmful substances, such as air pollution or proximity to toxic sites; access to various health-related resources; and community design and the built envi- ronment”. The solution for most of these dangerous threats can be discovered by physical activity resulted from the type of urban design and planning [11]. Increasing walking activities in cities through changes in the design of built environments is an outstanding Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. policy with some advantages in several areas such as sustainability, health, social ties, This article is an open access article economic transactions and traffic [12,13]. distributed under the terms and The need for research about the influence of the built environment on public health conditions of the Creative Commons and their relationships has been stressed by the World Health Organization (WHO) [14–17]. Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// Many health professionals invited architects and urban designers to react against the seden- creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ tary lifestyle by using the design of the built environments [18]. Therefore, the analysis 4.0/). of the urban environment has remarkably increased in the fields of urban planning and World 2021, 2, 49–61. https://doi.org/10.3390/world2010004 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/world World 2021, 2 50 geography, and public health and well-being in recent decades for the encouragement and facilitation of walking [19,20]. Urban designers and planners have focused on the characteristics of better walkable cities or neighborhoods, the correlation between walking, walkability, and built environments, and measuring physical activities in cities [21–23]. In this case, in addition to improving the health-oriented urban spaces by regarding walk- ing as an important priority in urban studies [24,25], they can achieve transportation and environmental goals (e.g., decreasing car dependency or reduction of exhaust fumes and emissions) [26,27]. 2. Literature Review 2.1. Walkability The term ‘walkability’ means compatibility, attractiveness, and opportunity of built environments in a street or a neighborhood for walking [20,28–31]. It is a general definition for this term although some recent literature has revealed a conflict in the interpretation of walkability and measuring its indexes [32,33]. The manner of defining walkability has significant connections to the perception of street networks, urban transportation, and the design of public spaces and streets [34]. The researchers considered walkability as a determinative factor for the quality of urban space and citizens’ lives [35,36], as well as quantitative aspects of walking [32]. It is referred to as characteristics of the built en- vironment that can help people to walk for different purposes, either leisure or access destinations [29], compelling them not to use their cars [4,37]. In fact, a deeper under- standing of walkability encompasses both selectable plans of walking (e.g., walking to the workplace, shopping center, etc.) or leisure-related mobility [32,38] for various types of citizens [39], and health advantages [40]. Numerous publications acknowledge the function of walkability as a supplier of public health [41] and positive relations between different amounts of walkability in cities and people’s physical activities [42,43]. Features of the urban built environment ranging from the form of the cities to im- proved pedestrian crossings can change our movement and whatever we do within the urban areas [44,45]. In particular, urban design can change and facilitate our travel be- havior in cities, including the quantity and quality of walking, cycling, public transport, and commuting by personal cars [46,47]. A positive intervention in these features of the built environment supports active transportation (walking and cycling), encouraging pop- ulations to walk or ride a bicycle instead of using motor-vehicles [11,12,31,48]. Accurate design of the built environment plays a vital role in walkability because it promotes more accessible, convenient, attractive, and efficient local neighborhoods [1,49], which in turn produces notable health benefits [50]. Frank et al. [41] proposed the first composite walkability index that includes land use mix, connectivity, and residential density within a buffer around a residence. Since then, many scholars have identified that several variables within a framework of 3D’s are the cornerstone of the definition and assessment of walkability: Density, land use Diversity (Land use mix), and pedestrian-oriented Design (Street connectivity) [4,41,51–53]. These are three large-scale features of the design of neighborhoods associated with walking and physical activity [54,55]. Density gathers more people and places in walkable spaces [32]. For instance, residen- tial density is one of the most influential built environment factors that change people’s interests in walking or cycling instead of other types of transportation [45,56]. The land use mix provides a greater variety of walkable destinations and activities in a geographic location [45,51]. In other words, mixed land use leads to provide daily destinations of a spectrum of people within closer proximity and with less distance travel [57]. Furthermore, better street connectivity provides shorter routes and better traffic flows [32,51]. 2.2. Street Connectivity In contemporary decades, urban planners and researchers of transportation have analyzed walkability in urban environments and predicted more than 56 various items World 2021, 2 51 or indicators that can be useful for walking behaviors. Among the most notable of these items are accessibility, land use mix, safety, comfort, density, connectivity, attractiveness, proximity, public transport supply, street layout, and so on [44]. One of the main environ- mental features that could exert direct or indirect impacts on active transport and physical activity is connectivity [48]. In a general view, street connectivity refers to the density of connections and the directness of links in the road network of cities [4,31,41] to simplify the movement between the origins (e.g., houses) and the destinations (e.g., shops) [55]. In the definition of this index, a well-connected road system should have numerous short links (a street between two intersections or from a dead-end to an intersection) and several nodes (including three- or four-way intersections and end of dead-end streets) with a few numbers of cul-de-sacs [44]. A road network