Despite numerous health and environmental benefits of
walking, little is often known in relation to how the
existing urban built environment conditions encourage or
inhibit this mode of transport. Using Kigali City as a
case study in Rwanda, the present work aims at
investigating to what extend different aspects of the built
environment may potentially affect urban walking. A set
of 224 administrative villages in Kicukiro District, has
been used as spatial units for which walkability indices
were developed. By means of Geographic Information
Systems (GIS), spatial, network and statistical analyses
were performed on a comprehensive set of components of
the urban built environment with the potential to
influence walking in the study area. These components
are residential density, street connectivity, land use
diversity and proximity to walkable destinations. Partial
indices (Z-score values) were first developed for each
component respectively. A final a composite index of
walkability was developed for all spatial units by
combining all aforementioned elements’ scores.