Walking With and Walking Through: Assessing Urban Design From Streets to Virtual Reality

Urban planners are increasingly exploring innovative methods to promote walkable cities, but traditional stakeholder engagement tools often fall short in fully capturing the pedestrian experience or facilitating inclusive urban design. This study investigates the use of virtual reality (VR) as a digital tool to bridge this gap and support planning for urban walkability. We began by conducting a series of go-along interviews with residents in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, to identify factors influencing local walkability. Next, we built an immersive VR urban environment. To ensure the digital tool reflected local lived experiences, we used interview insights to build the VR scenario, which featured targeted walkability factors identified from the interviews, such as lighting, greenery, and crossings. Subsequently, urban planning professionals were recruited to use the tool as a means of visualization to assess and reflect on the VR tool and its potential for urban design. Results indicate that the immersive environment offers an alternative method of visualization, revealing qualitative insights about urban design that differ from the quantitative data commonly found in conventional methods. The professionals reported that the VR tool allowed them to experience and assess urban design firsthand, while also highlighting its potential to effectively communicate design proposals to a broad range of stakeholders. The study concludes that VR has the potential to transform urban planning by providing an interactive urban design method, enabling inclusive urban design, and comprehensively addressing urban design walkability challenges.