Evaluating the Friendliness of Pedestrian Footbridges Using Visibility Analysis: A Case Study in Wuhan

Advocates of slow traffic consider that walking is the healthiest mode of travel. Footbridges across major roads are often used in cities to provide and ensure an environment with walkability, connectivity, and safety for pedestrian and are important in the slow traffic environment. Citizen’s perceptions of public service facilities within the urban environment depend directly on the pedestrian friendliness of footbridges. Adopting the perspective of visibility, the viewshed, degree of dispersion, function compactness, and landscape esthetics are selected by the Pearson correlation coefficient formula. Combined with spatial analysis theory and mathematical modeling, the entropy weight method is used to calculate the comprehensive index to evaluate the pedestrian friendliness of footbridges. The results show that viewshed area and function compactness have the largest influence on the final evaluation, followed by degree of dispersion, while landscape esthetics has the least impact. This paper evaluates the friendliness of pedestrian footbridges from a new perspective to provide a research reference for urban planners.