Urban Accessibility and Social Equity in Covid-19 Era: A Spatial Analysis in Two Neighbourhoods of the City of Naples

The academic debate has been turn the attention on pedestrian accessibility to urban services, as walking allow to solve several issues ranging from social and health problems also accentuated by the ongoing pandemic. The innovation in geospatial field has encouraged the development of accessibility and walkability measures and indicators oriented to measure the main physical and functional characteristics of the built environment related to the accessibility of urban services at the neighbourhood scale. According to these premises, this research work, aimed at improving pedestrian accessibility and guaranteeing equal access to neighbourhood-scale services, proposes a seven-steps GIS method based on an Accessibility Indicator that integrates the main aspects of walkability indexes relating to connectivity, sense of security, geometry and amenity of urban built environment. This Accessibility Indicator defines the areas of easy accessibility to the local essential services, by referring to two different maximum distances: the first relates to the distance of 700 m defined in the literature as the distance that a user is willing to walk to use a neighborhood service and the second relates to the regulatory restrictions adopted in the most difficult periods of the pandemic (500 m).