MertEmirSeker/walkability-optimization-for-15-minutes-cities: Initial Release

Walkability Optimization for 15-Minute Cities is an open-source software project designed to assist urban planners and researchers in enhancing city accessibility. The project focuses on the algorithmic placement of new urban amenities to ensure that residential areas have access to essential services within a 15-minute walking radius.Key Features: • Data Integration: Automated pipeline to fetch, parse, and categorize urban data (residential buildings, pedestrian paths, existing amenities, and candidate locations) directly from OpenStreetMap (OSM). • Walkability Analysis: comprehensive calculation of WalkScore for every residential building, utilizing a piecewise linear decay function based on walking distances to nearest amenities (Grocery, School, Restaurant, Healthcare). • Optimization Algorithms: ◦ Greedy Heuristic: For rapid approximation of optimal amenity placement. ◦ MILP (Mixed Integer Linear Programming): For finding globally optimal solutions to the facility location problem. • Candidate Selection: Intelligent identification of suitable locations for new amenities, utilizing underused spaces like parking lots, vacant land, and brownfield sites. • Visualization: Tools to generate geospatial visualizations of the current and optimized city states, highlighting service gaps and coverage improvements.Case Study: The initial implementation focuses on Balıkesir City Center (Karesi and Altıeylül districts), demonstrating how strategic interventions can significantly improve the city's walkability score and residential coverage.Technologies: • Python • NetworkX (Graph Analysis) • OpenStreetMap (Data Source) • PostgreSQL (Data Persistence) • Optimization Solvers