Proximity walks: Multimetric evaluation of the walkability network efficiency in Barcelona

Mobility on foot today accounts for between 25% and 50% of total trips in major European cities. Walking has increased significantly in recent years, driven by the growing awareness of the need for more sustainable and healthy urban mobility. Cities like Barcelona are witnessing a transformation of public spaces, focusing on rebalancing different urban transport modes to provide more space for safe and comfortable walking. Despite these efforts, studies that treat the ‘pedestrian network’ as a movement infrastructure are still in their early stages. This paper introduces and tests three measures to assess the efficiency of walkable networks, based on the analysis of 7.5-min walking itineraries and resulting isochrones using a high-resolution model of Barcelona’s sidewalks. These measures include the Reachable Sidewalk Area Index, the Compactness Index, and an analysis of three different approaches to assessing the Straightness of a given network. The paper concludes with a proposed combined metric that offers a precise and comprehensive evaluation of sidewalk and walkable systems.