How Does Walkability for Elderly People Differ between Hilly and Flat Urban Areas? A Case Study of Shin-Yurigaoka Station and Nagareyama-Otakanomori Station

Abstract. This study evaluates station-area environments that enable elderly people to walk comfortably in their daily lives. Conventional walkability assessments often emphasize street connectivity and proximity to destinations, but they do not fully capture walking burdens specific to elderly people, such as slopes and elevation differences. Therefore, this study examines whether some streets evaluated as central by Space Syntax within a street network are also streets that elderly people can walk on comfortably. The study areas are Shin-Yurigaoka Station, located in a hilly suburban area, and Nagareyama-Otakanomori Station, located in a relatively flat suburban area. A pedestrian network was extracted using OpenStreetMap road data, and Normalized Angular Integration and Normalized Angular Choice were calculated through Angular Segment Analysis in Space Syntax. The layer of high-centrality roads is overlaid on the layer of 5% or less slope roads, and that of 8% or less slope roads. In addition, field observation, pedestrian counts, interviews, and Mapillary photography were conducted to examine whether the central streets identified in the Space Syntax analysis corresponded to actual walking environments. This comparison shows that around Shin-Yurigaoka, some of the highly central streets include steeper slopes and may impose burdens on elderly people. By contrast, around Nagareyama-Otakanomori, low-slope streets are distributed more widely, suggesting a more comfortable walking environment. In conclusion, this study demonstrates both the usefulness and limitations of walkability assessments for elderly people by combining Space Syntax, slope analysis, and field survey. It also provides a workflow using open data and open-source GIS tools.