Creating walkable environment for axum city to encourage tourist mobility /the case of axum old settlement
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2015-06
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Ababauniversity
Abstract
Walkway spaces are an essential element of livable towns and cities in which people want to live. They can contribute in promoting walkable and well-connected areas. In any situation when people are asked as to why they choose to live in a particular location, most people usually say „this is walkable area”. It is natural that People want to live in places where there is a good range of amenities and facilities located within easy reach, such as open space, retail and recreational areas, good schools and childcare facilities, and good transport links to places that they need to access services. In both the developed and developing world, pedestrian friendly city is considered to be a prerequisite for enhancing urban life and play significant role as catalyst for safe and comfortable transport system. Furthermore, it is understood that in order to realize such urban environment urban design must include viable and accessible walkable routes.
Realizing this fact this study has tried to assess the situation of the existing walkability of Axum city by selecting a case study area in the old settlement. Based on the existing problems, Axum hardly meets the required urban quality and standard of tourist city in its facilitation of walking space provisions as urban public spaces. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to develop a set of detailed recommendations and approaches that could enable the tourist-oriented pedestrian system to play a major role in creating safe, sustainable, and equitable mobility in the city to be a touristic heritage site. Using such detailed regulations and guidelines and public stakeholder involvement, a uniform understanding can be reached within the different municipal divisions and walkability quality can be increased both for residents and visitors.
The analysis is based on the primary data by using various tools including interview, questionnaire survey, visual survey/observation, focus group discussion and secondary documents that were collected from the concerned agencies, of Axum city.
In general the lack of integrated urban walk way infrastructure and lack of common standards, lack of strong link between the land use development and tourism development are some of the findings of this research. Based on these findings the researcher has forwarded detail recommendation that includes designing the walk ways that fit to tourist city context as it is indicated in the detail recommendation and guidelines
Description
Keywords
Encourage tourist mobility