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The Walkability Planning Support System: An Evidence-Based Tool to Design Healthy Communities

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Planning Support Science for Smarter Urban Futures (CUPUM 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography ((LNGC))

Abstract

A major challenge for all cities is to reconcile growth with cultural, social and environmental considerations, along with connecting urban design with opportunities for health and wellbeing. Planning Support Systems (PSSs) can facilitate future planning and foster collaboration between researchers and urban planners in promoting healthy built environments. The Walkability PSS was developed specially for that purpose. This chapter presents an evaluation of the Walkability PSS, a PSS for building planning scenarios and assessing their impacts on walking behaviours. The evaluation was conducted in collaboration with a group of local urban planners. The study results show that the Walkability PSS could support planners in several situations including testing and comparing planning scenarios for greenfield and brownfield areas, conducting consultation and/or workshops with various stakeholders and making decisions about the provision of new infrastructure .

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Urban Research, Healthy Liveable Cities Research Group, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

    Claire Boulange & Billie Giles-Corti

  2. City Futures Research Centre, UNSW, Sydney, Australia

    Chris Pettit

Authors
  1. Claire Boulange
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  2. Chris Pettit
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  3. Billie Giles-Corti
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Claire Boulange .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Geosciences, Department of Human Geography and Planning, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Stan Geertman

  2. School of Art, Architecture and Design, University of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

    Andrew Allan

  3. UNSW Built Environment, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Chris Pettit

  4. School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom

    John Stillwell

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Boulange, C., Pettit, C., Giles-Corti, B. (2017). The Walkability Planning Support System: An Evidence-Based Tool to Design Healthy Communities. In: Geertman, S., Allan, A., Pettit, C., Stillwell, J. (eds) Planning Support Science for Smarter Urban Futures. CUPUM 2017. Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57819-4_9

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