Analysis and Final Steps

In this book, we develop a set of procedures that anyone can use to measure urban design qualities with a degree of validity and reliability. The first challenge in doing this is to explain the relationships between urban design qualities and perceived walkability and also between urban design qualities and physical features of streets. The second challenge is to demonstrate that urban design qualities can be rated consistently by different experts and that physical features can be measured consistently by different researchers. In this chapter, we use statistics to quantify both the relationships we are interested in and the reliability of our measurement methods. Urban design qualities that pass both tests are included in our field manual (chapter 6).