-

In the past, cities enjoyed a high level of walkability, and walking for the various stratas of the society was considered as the main traveling mode inside the human settlements due to its low cost and accessibility. But after the Industrial Revolution and the dominance of cars in the cities, the role of pedestrian walking was scaled down.
In the last decades, because of air pollution, policies to reduce the use of private cars and fossil energy consumotion, the urban planning has oriented itself towards increasing the walkability capcity in the cities.
Currently, numerous number of cities in the world have attempted to prepare pedestrian comprehensive plans, whose among main goals the following is enlisted:promotion of the quality of life, improvement of access and mobility, promoting the air quality, traned choices, economic vitality, equity, proper relationship between Transportation and Land use, funding and revenue, health and safety environmental sustainability.
Since The government and modern cities are taking shape on the basis of encouraging pedestrian movement and creating walkable cities. An important example in tine with this new approach one can mention as a practical policy has set the goal of changing into a walkable city by year 2015.
Since the street has always been the urban space that pedestrian can present there, throughout the history of human urbanization, street has undergone many changes. In a period of time it has distends from its past functions, and in another period all its functions were reflected in streets. Once it has been totally dominated by automobile and transportation, whereas in otter times the urban planners have been thinking of returning the previous identity and function of street. What is evident it is this fact the street as an important urban element, and as a stage for social activities, should be considered. And if we intend to have city for a more humane life, the first stage should include paying attention to the streets.
The present article, which is the result of literature review section of the author’s Ph.D thesis, intends to discuss the issue of walkability in the framework of increasing its capacity.
In this regard, by having introduced the research methodology, and the theoretical framework, the functional role of the street as an urban space is analysed. Moreover, the pedestrian comprehensive plans of 14 European and American cities are revised and some criteria influencing the walkability issues are extracted to provide answers to the following questions :
1- How can we design the cities for human and on human scales?
2- For achieving a balanced human-oriented (pedestrian–oriented) ballanced city, what indices should be taken into account?
Next, after the classification of those criteria, several indices for the evaluation of walkability are proposed in order to provide further presence of people in urban spaces.