Comparative Study and Ranking of Pedestrian Walkway Construction Experiences in Historical Contexts with an Emphasis on Culture-based Tourism

Historical tourism has a significant role in the transmission of culture and allows cities to penetrate a competitive environment. One of the actions used to protect historical contexts is designing walkways in ancient contexts. Evaluation of the quality of pedestrian walkways has great importance in the revival of city centers. Ranking pedestrian walkways in historical contexts can reveal the strengths and weaknesses of different cities in attracting tourists and provide valuable tips for tourism development. The purpose of this research is to compare different experiences in pedestrian walkway design in historical contexts with an emphasis on culture-based tourism and seeks to answer the question of how walkways are ranked based on cultural tourism indicators. This research, with a descriptive-analytical method and with a quantitative approach, has ranked the pedestrian walkways by using the multi-criteria decision-making method of MARCOS, and has weighted the parameters in the subset of function,  accessibility, physical, environmental, comfort and convenience, and social and cultural values factors, by using the best-worst method. The research findings show that the indicators of the number of museums and historical monuments, the plurality of cultural uses, and the number of public arenas available for occurring the activity, are more important than other indicators. Also, the ranking results of the walkways indicate that the Tarbiat walkway of Tabriz won first place with an optimum performance score of 0.729, followed by the Jannat walkway of Mashhad with a score of 0.501, and the 15 Khordad walkway of Tehran with a score of 0.482.