With the aim to enhance sustainability in general including walkability, the recent urban forms of the designs of the Emirati neighborhoods have been denser and more compact, if compared with the older design models. While there are various guidelines and regulations related to the microscale walkability measures for the urban design of neighborhoods in the Emirates but unfortunately the macroscale walkability measures have not received similar attention. So, to investigate how would these denser and more compact recent neighborhoods designs better perform regarding walkability macroscale measures, the research utilized the urban modelling interface (UMI) walkability simulation tool to calculate the UMI Walkscores of these designs because it considers almost all macroscale factors including both urban morphology and urban planning measures and it also allows for the customization of the types, required catchment distances, and weights of the significance of locally provided amenities. The UMI Walkscores were calculated for the six recent denser and more compact neighborhoods designs and were compared with the UMI Walkscore for a conventionally designed model of urban sprawling neighborhoods. Unexpectedly, it has been found out that urban compactness per se is not a sufficient design measure for enhancing walkability in local neighborhood designs, where much higher compactness and density have achieved disappointing UMI Walkscores. So, it seems that for the recent neighborhoods’ designs, little attention was paid to the impact of the street network connectivity measures of Intersection Density, Block Length and the link-to-nodes ratio, on UMI Walkscores, if compared with the main attention paid to increasing FAR through decreasing plot sizes. Meanwhile, the explicit macroscale urban planning measures including the land-use factors of the types, numbers, and the location of amenities, as well as the implicit factors of their destination and global weights seem to be more influential in enhancing the UMI Walkscores but have been less considered when planning these neighborhoods. So, besides considering well-known macroscale urban morphology aspects of street network connectivity and locational distribution of provided amenities, boosting walkability macroscale measures on the design level requires adopting a set of adequately customized measures including the appropriate values of their global and distribution weights. These walkability design weights should be also resilient and continuously reviewed to satisfy the changing needs of the local communities. Based on its findings, the research proposed a five-actions plan to help boost walkability macroscale measures in the design of local urban communities in the UAE.

中文翻译：

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更密集但更不易步行：宏观步行性指标对阿联酋社区近期设计的影响

为了提高总体的可持续性，包括步行性，与旧的设计模式相比，阿联酋社区最近的城市设计形式更加密集和紧凑。虽然有各种与阿联酋社区城市设计的微观步行适宜性措施相关的指导方针和规定，但不幸的是，宏观步行适宜性措施并没有受到类似的关注。因此，为了研究这些更密集、更紧凑的近期社区设计如何在步行性宏观尺度测量方面表现得更好，该研究利用城市建模界面 (UMI) 步行性模拟工具来计算这些设计的 UMI Walkscores，因为它考虑了几乎所有宏观因素，包括城市形态和城市规划措施，并且还允许定制类型、所需的流域距离，以及当地提供的便利设施的重要性。UMI Walkscores 是针对最近六个更密集和更紧凑的社区设计计算的，并与传统设计的城市蔓延社区模型的 UMI Walkscore 进行了比较。出乎意料的是，已经发现城市紧凑性本身并不是提高当地社区设计中的步行性的充分设计措施，在当地社区设计中，更高的紧凑性和密度已经实现了令人失望的 UMI Walkscores。所以，似乎在最近的社区设计中，与主要关注的交叉口密度、街区长度和链路与节点比率等街道网络连通性措施对 UMI Walkscores 的影响相比，几乎没有受到关注。通过减小地块大小来增加 FAR。同时，显性的宏观城市规划措施，包括类型、数量和便利设施位置的土地利用因素，以及其目的地和全球权重的隐性因素似乎对提高 UMI Walkscores 的影响更大，但有在规划这些街区时考虑较少。因此，除了考虑街道网络连通性和所提供便利设施的位置分布等众所周知的宏观城市形态方面，在设计层面提高步行性宏观尺度措施需要采用一套充分定制的措施，包括其全局和分布权重的适当值。这些步行设计权重也应该具有弹性并不断审查，以满足当地社区不断变化的需求。根据调查结果，该研究提出了一项五项行动计划，以帮助提高阿联酋当地城市社区设计中的步行适宜性宏观尺度。