The contributions of this paper are the result of a thematic review conducted on some of the most relevant scientific contributions and policy guidelines about women’s perception of safety while walking in public spaces. The first part of the review focused on 23 scientific references revolving around the keywords “gender”, “safety” and “walkability”. This led to the establishment of three main Safety Factors: (i) Spatial Features (space characteristics/morphological features); (ii) City Use (traces of behavior and presence of city users); and (iii) Hotspots (safe havens and no-go areas); further resulting in 19 sub-factors. The second part of the review covered a collection of 20 reports and 10 guidelines focused on diverse geographical scales, areas of interest and target audiences, as well as data collection methods. This involved the selection of multiple case studies, which are also presented, thus maintaining a geographically diverse sample. As part of the scientific research project “STEP UP—Walkability for Women in Milan”, the outputs of the proposed thematic review will be exploited to help identify challenging areas of Milan (Italy), as samples of analysis to develop a set of policy recommendations to enhance the level of walkability for women.

The needs of night communities and the barriers they face in accessing diverse urban amenities are underexplored in urban planning research. Focus is primarily given to the needs of cultural consumers, frequently overlooking the challenges faced by regular nighttime communities, including night workers. Through a GIS-based analysis, the aim of this research is to shed light on differences in accessibility to core urban services between day and night in the city of Milan. The spatiotemporal analysis was performed using a customized version of the 15-min City Score Toolkit, an open-source, Python-based proprietary tool developed to automate the 15 min access metric estimation. Proprietary Point-Of-Interest (POI) data that were retrieved, sorted and filtered from the Google Places API are used to simulate time-variant walkability maps based on opening hour information contained in the dataset. The research reveals significant differences in walkability potential, both in spatial and temporal terms, and highlights gaps in nighttime service availability. The work presents an innovation on the 15 min city approach that highlights the impact of 24-h urban rhythms on real walkability outcomes. The quality limitations of the Google data are extensively explored in the article, providing further insight into the replicability and scalability of the methodology for future research.

Much has been written on the fast-paced development of Dubai as a city and the favoring of car-oriented streets in the approach to road building. This paper offers a reading of the city using the most forward-driven technological approaches in urban and transport planning to derive patterns and insights into areas of critical concern for intervention. The approach stems from the idea of incremental retrofitting as opposed to toppling over the current infrastructure, as a way to significantly enhance the walkability and viability of Dubai’s streets for its residents using minimal resources, while drastically enhancing their ability to utilize public space. The focal element of this collection of studies is the street. In full, the extensive research traces the functional structure of 36 streets within the city, offering various insights into their potential to deliver better walkable environments. From observations of field surveys to progressive applied methods, this collection of studies offers taxonomic categorizations of Dubai’s streets as well as possible concerted and planned retrofitting strategies designed to encourage safe and comfortable walking experiences in a timely manner, and reduce possibilities for contracting airborne diseases, such as the novel coronavirus, COVID-19. This paper focuses on how the interplay of various interdependent components of urban infrastructure creates the conditions for Dubai’s street space to respond to walkability needs. Building on international practice and the latest disciplinary tools, this paper delves into the physical characteristics of Dubai’s streets and interrogates some of the critical areas whereby minimal intervention is perceived to have a huge impact on spatio-temporal urban quality. In effect, the study highlights avenues for activating Dubai’s most overlooked latent public spaces: its streets.