Abstract:
Dhaka, being the ninth largest and the fastest growing mega city of the world by population,
experiences 62% of daily trips conducted by walking. Throughout the city mostly urban poor
population makes their daily trips by walking as they have only few or no alternatives. However,
walkability in general is beneficial for health, social and economic aspects of every citizen; and also
supportive to environment. City planning authority in Dhaka has taken initiative for preparing the
built environment in convenience to the pedestrian behaviors in Planned Residential areas. Such
initiatives concentrate on the improvement of streetscape only, whereas walkability depends on many
other physical and non-physical factors among which Spatial Network determining the choice of
movement is most important. In this research condition of walkability and the reasons behind the
preference of walking on a number of streets in the planned residential area (Gulshan and Banani)
was investigated.
Originally conceived and designed for the high income group of the society, the serene environment
of Gushan and Banani residential areas are gradually disrupted by the invasion of commercial
functions, which eventually degraded the overall livability of these residential areas. In order to ensure
Gulshan-Banani area as livable residential area walkability needs to be enhanced; as walkability is an
essential component of Livability. The overall aim of this research was to determine the relationship
between walkability and the spatial network of the planned residential areas in spite of the differences
in the physical structure of planned areas and the evolving changes in the structure of the city within
which the area is embedded. Space Syntax was used here to analyze the spatial network and
population count was undertaken to identify the users’ preferences. In brief, this research tried to find
out the walkability of the Gulshan-Banani residential area, with the aim to ensure livability in these
residential areas.
From syntactic analysis, pedestrian movement pattern and land use survey, it has been identified that,
spatial pattern have been very much interrelated with the functional and current movement pattern
within Gulshan-Banani residential area. As a result, huge amount of pedestrian movement has been
observed in the study area, most of whom are non-residents. In such a situation, effort should be
given in formulating policies to encourage local residents as being pedestrians, while policies should
also be there in convenience to the non-resident pedestrians in order to encourage this new
phenomenon prevailing in the planned residential areas of Dhaka.
