Walking is a sustainable mode of transport and a healthy way of doing physical activity. Walkability is a concept that has gained enormous popularity in recent years due to its potential to promote more sustainable urban environments and healthy lifestyles. This paper provides a literature review to analyze the influence of built environment attributes on walkability. The Scopus and Web of Science databases were chosen to survey the peer-reviewed documents published up to June 2020. A total of 132 documents were selected by the search. The review of these 132 documents showed that various built environment attributes were differently analyzed and assessed. More specifically, the search identified 32 built environment attributes that were assessed by using 63 measures. Intersection density, residential density and land use mix were the most used attributes for assessing walkability, namely by using objective methods, such as ratios and spatial score tools. In turn, attributes related to streetscape design and security were much less adopted in walkability assessments. This paper provides additional insights into how built environment attributes influence walkability and identifies gaps and issues that should be analyzed in-depth in the future. The review could be helpful for researchers and urban planners in developing walkability studies and in defining policies to improve walkability.

Walking is undoubtedly a sustainable and healthy mode of transport. However, the decision to walk is influenced by many built environment and streetscape attributes. Specifically, the term walkability is used to describe the extent to which the urban environment is pedestrian-friendly, usually by quantifying multiple built environment attributes at the neighbourhood scale. The present study adopts a qualitative approach to evaluate perceived walkability. Based on a questionnaire (n = 1438) administered in the cities of Bologna and Porto, this paper analyses how respondents perceived and evaluated 19 built environment and streetscape attributes. An Exploratory Factor Analysis was carried out to examine the correlations between the various attributes and to identify the underlying walkability determinants. The analysis indicated that 13 attributes were highly correlated, resulting in four determinants: (i) urban ambiance, which includes land use and street design attributes, such as land use mix, enclosure, transparency, and architectural and landscape diversity; (ii) pedestrian infrastructure, which is related to sidewalk conditions; (iii) street connectivity and proximity to community facilities; and iv) access to other modes of transport. In turn, traffic safety and security were not correlated with perceived walkability in both cities. These findings suggest that specific urban design and pedestrian infrastructure attributes should be highly considered when formulating policies aiming to create more pedestrian-friendly cities, as well as in walkability studies and when developing walkability scores and indexes.

Green spaces have become the most threatened by urban growth, and the decline in these areas is a main cause of environmental and social problems with implications for human health and well-being. Vertical greenery systems have been proposed as a solution to restore the connection between the city and nature, particularly in compact and dense cities, where horizontal space is limited. This paper provides a literature review to examine the influence of outdoor and indoor vertical greenery systems on human health and well-being. The Web of Science and Scopus databases were chosen to survey peer-reviewed documents published until October 2022. A total of 73 documents were selected by the search. Over 71% of the documents were published over the last four years, and most of them focused on the environmental and thermal benefits of vertical greenery systems. Although these benefits could bring health and well-being outcomes, they were not objectively measured and quantified. Other additional gaps and guidelines for future research were also identified and discussed. This review could be helpful for researchers and urban planners in developing vertical greenery to create healthy and more sustainable cities.

Heritage tourism has been widely seen in the last years as an effective way of addressing the socio-economic problems and the heritage degradation of peripheral territories. Heritage is a rising tourism product providing tourists with experiences based on the (in)tangible remains of the past. Due to the lack of other possibilities, the policies found in peripheral territories often highlight tourism – particularly heritage tourism – as the most valuable activity to launch a more sustainable development process. Nevertheless, the impact of heritage tourism is controversial and not always evident both in terms of socio-economic regeneration and in terms of heritage rehabilitation, contradicting some generalized rhetoric. The article presents the main conclusions of research undertaken in the Portuguese peripheral municipality of Almeida, where heritage tourism is claimed to be the most promising activity to overcome the current trend of decline. Data were collected from municipal and regional entities using a previously structured survey about perceptions and attitudes towards heritage tourism development in the municipality. The findings disclose the main obstacles, the strategies and the challenges that this territory is facing to underpin development based on heritage tourism. The main conclusions highlight the strong fragmentation between public and private entities and the lack of a tourism management plan for Almeida's successful future as a destination of heritage tourism. In certain ways, and due to similar problems, the findings and the proposals of the present research can be applied to other peripheral areas.