Chinatown Rethinks Walkability

New York City, New York, USA

By Heming Zhang
walkability, methodologies, chinatown, sidewalk activities

This project tries to examine the methodologies of walkability and critique the official boundary of Chinatown.

Facing many social and environmental issues such as urban sprawl, climate change, and chronic diseases, planners and exports developed the idea of New Urbanism in early 1980s, which emphasis the sense of community should be promoted by the pedestrian-friendly neighborhood. Nowadays, Western societies are leading a tendency of creating more walkable cities. To measure the suitability of built environments for walking and cycling, scholars and researchers developed several quantitative methodologies, such as Walk Score and Walkability Index, to calculate walkability of cities and nations.

Walk Score

Walkability Index

However, they only focus on the physical conditions but fail to engage more social impact in their methods. As the result of this tendency, both academic and practical world is pursuing a homogenous standards and methods to guide their research and decision-making process. The question is whether these methods are valid for different countries, cities, and communities, and whether the term “walkability” in their understanding can represent the aspects of citizens and visitors.

I use this project to critique those homogenous methodologies of measuring walkability and break down the stereotypes of walkable neighborhoods. Since a report states that the most walkable metro areas are wealthier, healthier and have greater educated workforce. I analyze the case of Chinatown, which have higher Walk Score and Walkability Index score, which means they suggest Chinatown should be a walkable neighborhood, but it is also a relatively low-income, low education levels and poor air quality neighborhood with large senior population.

Chinatown as a very diverse immigrant neighborhood provides living, working, studying and playing space for multiple classes and races of residents and visitors. The first problem I faced at the beginning of my research is what Chinatown is.

To critique and redefine the territory of Chinatown, firstly, I mapped every stores which have Chinese characters on them. Overlapping with the data of most frequently spoken language at home, I try to show where Chinese’s potential residential area is within the walkable distance (10-minutes walking) from Chinatown.

Finally, the neighborhood scale online map with images on the sidewalk can provide both physical conditions and social activities of local residents. I tried to document photos of sidewalk-view and map personal determinants of walking in Chinatown. In this neighborhood scale online map, I embed the photos I took on the street for each hexagon. Those photos actually bridge the top-down view of research map with bottom-up view of people’s daily lives.