Assessing walkability in Dhaka’s Central Business districts

• Walkability index is calculated using GIS to categorize the CBDs at meso-scale. • Multi-Criteria Decision-Making approach is used to assess walkability at micro-scale. • Mirpur Ward-03 is the most walkable CBD, Motijheel Ward-08 the least at meso-scale. • Mirpur Ward-03 has very poor footpath quality, accessibility and safety facilities. • Motijheel Ward-08 footpaths have high illegal-car parking and hawker encroachments. The Central Business Districts (CBDs) of Dhaka are characterized by heavy traffic congestion, air pollution and peak office hour commuting density. Pedestrian-friendly environment is crucial for accessing the CBDs as it reduces auto-mobile dependency and encourages transit use. As of now, no research has assessed the walkability of Dhaka’s CBDs considering meso-scale factors such as land use diversity, density, street connectivity and micro-scale factors such as footpath continuity and quality, accessibility, safety, security, amenity and comfort of the streets. This paper evaluates the built environment attributes of total 15 wards across core CBDs of Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) and Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC): Motijheel, Karwan Bazar, Mohakhali, Gulshan-Banani, and Mirpur to objectively assess walkability at both meso and micro scales. At meso-scale, a walkability index is generated that categorizes the wards into the most and least walkable using GIS, with Mirpur DNCC Ward-03 identified as the most walkable and Motijheel DSCC Ward-08 as the least walkable. At micro-scale, the walking environments in Mirpur Ward-03 and Motijheel Ward-08 are assessed based on Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) approach. Results reveal several challenges such as narrow and discontinuous footpaths, presence of multiple barriers including utility poles, pillars, trees and, limited accessibility in Mirpur Ward-03 and garbage dumping, illegal car parking, haphazard hawker encroachments in Motijheel Ward-08. Our findings identify targeted areas needing improvement to enhance overall pedestrian-friendliness of the CBDs. The methodology followed in this study could be applied to evaluate the walkability of CBDs worldwide.