Page 33 - JCAU-5-3

Journal of Chinese
Architecture and Urbanism Walkability evaluation of Beijing Old Town

The inscription of the Central Axis on the World and build a scoring model to achieve automatic perception
Heritage List will accelerate the cultural revitalization and scoring of street view pictures.
and heritage protection of Beijing Old City. In addition The studies on walkability were narrowed down to
to focusing on the heritage itself, more attention needs to neighborhoods, commercial district (Xie, 2017; Carson
be paid to the street as a space for urban life and cultural et al., 2023), track station exit (Liu & Pan, 2018) and other
functions, especially in terms of dialog and communication urban spaces, with lesser focus on historic districts with
between modern residents and historical heritage (Zhang rich world heritage. Liu & Zheng (2023) used multi-source
& Huo, 2002). The increasing people congregation will put big data to measure the walkability of streets in Beijing’s
more pressure on the existing conservation of heritage, but Second Ring Road from the perspective of landscape
excessive control and unwalkable streets will also turn the architecture. Liu (2020) used space syntax and index score
huge resources invested in heritage protection into a silent to measure the street walkability of Dashilan Historical
cost. Therefore, how to improve the walkability of streets District in Beijing. Shartova et al. (2023) evaluated the
and effectively connect the heritage tourist paths under the walkability of the old city of Moscow from the perspective
condition of ensuring the promotion of the Central Axis of healthy city. Thus, for the evaluation methods of street
as a World Heritage Site is an important issue to further walkability, the walking environment scale and walking
promote the application of the Central Axis as a World index are widely used abroad (Cunningham et al., 2005),
Heritage Site and improve the quality of urban space. while the questionnaire survey and multi-source data
Domestic and foreign scholars have mainly focused on evaluation are mainly applied in China (Yu & Wu, 2018).
two aspects in previous studies of urban street walkability With the advancement of science and technology, big
(Dong & Long, 2015; Fang et al., 2018), namely, the data extraction and machine learning are increasingly
evaluation of objective factors of street walkability, and the applied to the evaluation of street walkability. However,
analysis of influencing factors. The content of the research focusing on historic districts with rich heritage requires
is mainly about constructing a system for indexing the local modification of evaluation indicators. Based on the
walkability of streets (Liu, 2020; Song, 2021). With the above studies, this paper focuses on Beijing’s old city streets
updated assessment techniques and methods (Wang within the Second Ring Road from the perspective of the
et al., 2021), attempts have been made to assess indicators World Heritage application. First, 13 objective evaluation
of street walkability back in the 1980s, with Gehl (2011) indicators and three subjective evaluation indicators were
being the first one describing the quality of outdoor space used to comprehensively evaluate the walkability of the old
required for walking. Many researchers have followed city streets from two levels. Correlation analysis was used to
his work, developing a vocabulary of walkability and a identify factors that influence the walkability of the streets,
systematic index system for assessing walkability (Ewing and strategies were proposed to improve the walkability
& Handy, 2009; Blečić et al., 2018). To meet the different of the street for the purpose of heritage conservation and
guidance requirements of measuring unmeasurable revitalization.
factors, different evaluation indices have been established
(Maghelal & Capp, 2011). 2. Research design
However, most of the methods can easily obtain 2.1. Research scope
urban physical space walking environment indicators
(Frank et al., 2010; Manaugh & El-Geneidy, 2011; Hall The old city of Beijing, which was the ancient capital of five
& Ram, 2019). This index evaluation method not only dynasties, has undergone big transformation, and the city
ignores complex physical indicators, such as microclimate streets, which were initially used for walking, had become
conditions, but also ignores pedestrians’ subjective amenable to motor traffic and then changed back to
perception. As a supplement, some scholars use subjective walking. The Central Axis Heritage embodies the essence of
perceptions and observations based on perception data to Chinese civilization and the history and culture of Beijing.
assess walkability (Cerin et al., 2007). However, it is time- The street is an important space for dialog between people
consuming and labor-intensive to carry out fieldworks, and heritage. However, the current road traffic situation
such as observing walking activity. New techniques and in the Second Ring Road is becoming worse, rather than
algorithms have revealed the possibility of automated better, posing safety risks to the pedestrians and affecting
quantitative measurement of walkability and overcome the walkability and walking comfort of the street.
previous limitations. For example, Wang et al. (2021) In a macro sense, Beijing Old City generally refers to
used SVM algorithm, deep neural network algorithm, and the central area within the Second Ring Road. However,
random forest algorithm to carry out machine learning from the perspective of the application of the Central Axis

Volume 5 Issue 3 (2023) 2 https://doi.org/10.36922/jcau.1033