International Research Trends and Methods for Walkability and Their Enlightenment in China

In recent years, new urbanism design for walkability has been a major focus of city planning. Walkability contributes to the health, well-being, and quality of life of citizens in cities. The link between walkability in cities and the health of citizens’ need more indepth research and a comprehensive appraisal of the international research methods for walkability will a good start to build foundation to define research focus and to provide some references for China which is going through a fast urbanization process. This paper discusses the importance of walkability in the new urban development, which has close relationship with public health, urban form and transportation. This paper through literature review, conducts an international comparative study of research methods used for conducting research on walkability. It provides a brief overview of theoretical frameworks that define and measure walkability in different subjects. The method used in this paper includes the following. In order to explore the trend and methodology objectively among related subjects, a database is set up by the software Histcite and CiteSpace, consisting of 813 related papers included in the database of “Web of Science” and 16468 indirect papers referenced by the 813 papers. The citation relationships between these related papers are then analyzed by Histcite and CiteSpace in order to find the connection between different subjects of the papers. The fields of geography, transportation and sociology, and other related research perspectives and contents have been discussed. The result of this review of other countries offers an empirical approach and evidence for a definition of measurable attributes and thresholds for walkable city research in general. It also provides reference with the walkability index and methods for Chinese city planners to meet the China's conditions in future.