Walkability index for the city of Bogota

Pedestrian mobility has been a recurrent aspect in discourses on the contemporary city. It is expected that cities generate urban spaces that encourage walkability, promoting thus the reduction of vehicular mobility and the recovery of environmental quality, seeking to improve the quality of life of citizens. For this reason, it is necessary to quantitatively evaluate different conditions that allow citizens to have displacements on foot, and to use this as a basis for the implementation of mobility and public space policies that allow generating more pedestrian-friendly environments. In the case of Bogota and its administrative divisions. the paper proposes the construction and measurement of a walkability index based on five components (environmental quality, density. comfort, proximity, and entropy) at the level of Zonal Planning Units (UPZ), through the analysis of spatial databases and Geographic Information System tools. This index is a relative indicator of how well the environment is constructed in different areas with respect to walking and what environmental conditions favor such behavior. It helps to diagnose the degree of walkability for each UPZ, as well as to distinguish diverse conditions in the analyzed areas.