How urban morphology influences the walkability?

Abstract

[EN] It is known that the Modernism greatly influenced the way people use spaces, the car use was prioritized, changing the function of the street from a meeting space (human scale – Gehl, 2010) to a passage space (motor scale). It is in this context that this paper aims to present the aspects that interfere in the walkability with focus on different urban morphologies. For this purpose, the study was applied to three neighbourhoods of Lisbon (Portugal) with different morphological characteristics: Graça (organic mesh), Campo de Ourique (regular mesh) and Telheiras (contemporary mesh) and then for the analysis methodological were applied their respective axial maps – derived from the Space Syntax Theory (Hillier and Hanson, 1984). The findings show that, as some authors (Hillier and Hanson, 1984; Handy, 1996; Holanda, 2002; Medeiros, 2013) state, there are differences in performance between different urban forms. According to Jacobs (2000) and Gehl (2010), modern spaces or those that suffer the influence of modernism have morphological elements that repel people, which make the space almost desert, without life. Therefore, it is concluded that depending on the morphological characteristics present in the space there will be more or less life. In other words, the greater segregation between the morphological elements, lower the presence of people in public space.