Investigation the Role of Walkability in developing Tourism in Urban axes Case study: Tourism axis of Qazvin city

The depreciation of historical urban fabrics in term of their different physical and functional aspects has caused many problems in the ancient cities such as population displacement, social and economic issues and encountered the residents with various problems. While, such urban fabrics have huge tourism attractions due to the presence of historical monuments as tangible heritages from on hand and the cultural events and rituals as in tangible heritages on the other hand. The experiences of the successful historical cities around the world, which attract tourists, confirm that by considering those potentials they are not only able to meet their residents but to be attractive places for tourists’ present as well. Walkability as one of the most important qualities which providing a desirable routes in general and in the tourism axes in particular has been considering in the research to improve the users' experiences in those mentioned spaces. Sepah Street of Qazvin city has been selected as a case study due to its historical significance as the first designed street in Iran and its different tourism attractions. In this regard, in the first step "walkability" and its different parameters were investigated and categorized based on the existing researches. In the next step, to explore the influential parameters enhancing walkability a survey study was performed in the tourism axis of Qazvin city as the case study and its four different dimensions including: accessibility, safety and security, desirability (amenities and facilities), comfort and environmental considerations were examined. In the research, 100 residents and users were participated and the results analyzed by SPSS software and its relevant statistical exams. The results indicate that all fore mentioned dimensions had the significant meaningful correlation with the walkability quality as the dependent variable and more importantly, comfort and tranquility of the place was the most significant physical parameter among other relationships between dependent and independent variables by maximum spearman's correlation degree (sig=0 and spearman's Correlation= 0.770). At final step of the research, in order to investigate of participants' point of views about the case study and clarify the case condition a research was conducted applying a quantitative and qualitative method. By this aim in mind, participants were asked to express their needs and expectations in the selected case study in the order of their priorities.  The collected data were categorized based on the meanings and subjects expression by participants including: place activities, physical place features, accessibility and aesthetics parameters. The recent step of the study was accomplished by performing a hierarchy analysis of the participants’ responses in those mentioned category. The results showed that aesthetics parameter has been the most important feature in the participants' evaluations and place activities, accessibility and physical characters were the next parameters in order. Considering the participants' priorities the lowest means has been belonged to the physical aspects of the place, which can be justified by the desirable physical conditions of the place conducting participants' minds and attitudes toward their superior needs like aesthetic and beauty of the place and its importance to encourage people presence in the streets and to improve place walkability.