Factors influencing the walkability of Kuala Lumpur City Centre

Abstract

Walking is the most basic form of transportation which is getting less popular and lost its function as the contributing factor towards creating good social interaction and urban space. Urban spaces, such as those in Kuala Lumpur city centre have been dominated by high volume of motorized vehicle, which has subsequently caused the pedestrian space being discriminated by vehicles. Besides, the concept of “Walkable City” is able to create a walkable urban environment i.e encourage the public to walk in to the city centre. Hence, the objectives of the study are; to identify the problems that the public face to walk in the city centre; to examine factors that influence the public to choose to walk in the city centre and to assess the characteristics that make the city centre walkable. The focus of the study is only on those who does daily activities in the Kuala Lumpur city centre. As the objectives of the study implicate quantitative and qualitative data, “mixed method” is utilized for data analysis. The main data of the study is collected through questionnaire survey, while the supporting data is collected through field observation and content analysis of written documents. The sampling method of “Multistage Stratified Cluster Sampling” was utilized, comprising 400 respondents. The quantitative data was analyzed using SPSS version 18, through interpretations of the value of median, percentage, frequency and factor analysis; while the qualitative data was analyzed using descriptive analysis and self-interpretation techniques. The findings show that the psychological factor is the main influential factor towards those who walks in Kuala Lumpur city centre. However, the physical factor also plays a pivotal role in moulding the urban environment to become more walkable. As a conclusion, the Kuala Lumpur city centre will achieve the concept of “walkable city” when these two influential factors are applied.