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Daily walking is a recommended physical activity. It can be an all-age suitable, environment-friendly transport option. However, traffic crashes are a widely recognized risk factor, associated with drivers’ errors or a combination of several environmental factors, including physical characteristics of the road space. The aim of this study was to assess the characteristics of built environments on pedestrian safety. Data on road accidents that had occurred between 2005 and 2015, in Alghero, Italy, were retrieved and matched with spatial and functional street qualities. On-street parking was found to increase the risk of pedestrian accidents by about two times, whereas, narrow travel lanes and intersections reduced the incidence of crashes and their public relevance. These field results could inform urban health and spatial planning policies with the final goal of improving health and providing more sustainable models of urban organization.

Built environment design can be considered as an influential factor in the quality of life of people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This scoping review provides an overview of the current available literature on the relationship between people with ASD and built environment in the specific field of the design of autism-friendly spaces. The literature review allowed the identification of three main factors to be considered when designing for people with ASD—the sensory quality, the intelligibility, and the predictability of the built environment—and, for each of them, a description of the spatial requirements that have been recognized as fundamental according to the specific spatial needs of people with ASD.

Since ancient times, pilgrimages have been an important expression of faith because slow-paced traveling, physical effort, and a closer relationship with nature favor introspection. Protecting pilgrimage routes means transforming them into a medium to rediscover and guide landscape development while avoiding possible speculative drifts. Such an approach is particularly important in rural areas often relegated to a marginal role in planning strategies, but frequently traversed by these itineraries. This paper deals with pilgrimage routes in Sardinia (Italy) and their chance to become an integral part of composite territorial infrastructures for triggering regeneration processes in rural areas. First, we introduce the topic with reference to planning literature and various case studies. Then, we select four pilgrimage itineraries that extend through different parts of the island, and compare them using a set of indicators regarding landscape, accessibility, visibility, equipment, planning, and management. A composite index has been developed to classify paths with respect to their potential to become part of a system of greenways, providing facilities and benefits to surrounding areas. The analysis highlights the strengths and weaknesses of local realities. It underlines factors, such as intrinsic characteristics of territories, local management, and decision-making circumstances, which affect trail potentialities to activate greenway projects to trace a new development perspective for rural areas.

We present a survey of operational methods for walkability analysis and evaluation, which we hold show promise as decision-support tools for sustainability-oriented planning and urban design. An initial overview of the literature revealed a subdivision of walkability studies into three main lines of research: transport and land use, urban health, and livable cities. A further selection of articles from the Scopus and Web of Science databases focused on scientific papers that deal with walkability evaluation methods and their suitability as planning and decision-support tools. This led to the definition of a taxonomy to systematize and compare the methods with regard to factors of walkability, scale of analysis, attention on profiling, aggregation methods, spatialization and sources of data used for calibration and validation. The proposed systematization aspires to offer to non-specialist but competent urban analysts a guide and an orienteering, to help them integrate walkability analysis and evaluation into their research and practice.

The paper focuses on the relationship between cities and people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Specifically, this research aims to provide practical guidelines on how to design urban policies and urban design projects, such that they improve the capabilities of people with ASD to walk across the city and access relevant public urban spaces and facilities. Although this is a well-defined field of research, this paper should be seen as a contribution to the debate on the understanding of disability as a product of processes of human-environment interaction and as an attempt to address issues of mobility for people with disabilities by taking into account their personal characteristics and capabilities. Current methodological and operational efforts on the role of spatial configuration as a means for improving the autonomy of people with ASD focus almost exclusively on the design of closed, separated, private spaces, devoted only to people with ASD (mainly children). Starting from these considerations, the paper describes a research project aimed at defining an integrated set of urban mobility policies and extra-small urban design projects to provide people with ASD a real opportunity of using their city.

We propose a decision-aiding evaluation procedure (i) for classifying road crossings based on their impact on walkability and, subsequently, (ii) for prioritising street improvements, in urban-rural fringe areas. In the peripheral urban-rural fringes, pedestrian mobility is usually less developed and people generally depend more on cars for their everyday chores. Partly this is inevitable given the structural features and supply of services and activities in such areas, but part is due to a frequent neglect of pedestrian mobility in planning and urban design. Measures to improve this state of affairs can include the design of more pedestrian-friendly environments offering to potential users a greater level of security, comfort and convenience when walking to their designated destinations. Our evaluation procedure combines a walkability assessment methodology with the ELECTRE TRI rating procedure, in order to assist planners and decision makers in designing physical streets to enhance the continuity, safety and quality of pedestrian paths. Improving the walking accessibility in the fringe areas of towns is a way to reduce the physical and perceptual distance which separates these contexts from the rest of the city, thus leading to a progressive integration of urban functions.