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This study intends to analyze the trend of walkability research over two years (2021–2022) in several aspects, including the research problem, gap and aim underlying walkability issues, research setting, the scale of analysis, the type of data, the data collection tool, the analysis method and contribution.

Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) is employed to conduct a systematic literature review from three leading databases including Web of Science (WoS), Scopus and Sage.

From the review, it can be concluded that the research focuses on two aspects, namely, the built environment and people. The studies in this field are conducted at different scales of the built environment, from macroscale to microscale, including region, city, neighborhood and street-level studies that are conducted around the world including Asia, Europe and America which receive high attention from researchers. Meanwhile, the study of walkability in Australia and Africa gains less attention. It is revealed that there are four factors of walkability including land use and accessibility for macroscale which cover region, city and neighborhood, while street network and pedestrian infrastructure and facility are mainly analyzed for street-level. Most of the studies widely utilize a quantitative approach for analyzing physical walkability factors in a measurement-based approach by using certain tools/software, and a perception-based approach by using questionnaires.

The findings can assist to keep up with the rapid pace of scientific publications and help accelerate the understanding of particular ideas in the field of walkability for the planning and design practice and policy that can be used by researchers/academia, urban designers, urban planners, architects, engineers and policymakers. Also, this study hopefully could assist further research direction for the future and could add value to a more advanced way of understanding the research on walkability.

This research provides a robust framework for walkability trend analysis and a comprehensive understanding of the main ideas from the existing research on walkability worldwide.

The present study, based on a comparative analysis of several historic houses in Shiraz, presents a new perspective on uncovering the role of the social lives of homeowners in the formation of the spatial configurations of their houses.

Twelve plans were selected and analyzed using space syntax techniques. The spatial characteristics were compared mathematically using integration, intelligibility and axial synergy.

The results of the research showed that spatial configurations reflected the social identity of their homeowners as well as their cultural and private beliefs. The results further highlighted the syntactical differences between different types of one courtyard houses, two courtyard houses and three courtyard houses. While privacy was maintained across all housing layouts, centralized one-courtyard typography had the highest synergy while the three-courtyard typology had the highest intelligibility.

This research advances the use of space syntax approach in the design of contemporary housing by recognizing the socio-cultural values of its occupants.

This study examines chronic illness, disability and social inequality within an exposure-vulnerabilities theoretical framework.

Using the National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), a preeminent source of national behavioral health estimates of chronic medical illness, stress and disability, for selected sample years 2005–2014, we construct and analyze two foundational hypotheses underlying the exposure-vulnerabilities model: (1) greater exposure to stressors (i.e., chronic medical illness) among racial/ethnic minority populations yields higher levels of serious psychological distress, which in turn increases the likelihood of medical disability; (2) greater vulnerability among minority populations to stressors such as chronic medical illness exacerbates the impact of these conditions on mental health as well as the impact of mental health on medical disability.

Results of our analyses provided mixed support for the vulnerability (moderator) hypothesis, but not for the exposure (mediation) hypothesis. In the exposure models, while Blacks were more likely than Whites to have a long-term disability, the pathway to disability through chronic illness and serious psychological distress did not emerge. Rather, Whites were more likely than Blacks and Latinx to have a chronic illness and to have experienced severe psychological distress (both of which themselves were related to disability). In the vulnerability models, both Blacks and Latinx with chronic medical illness were more likely than Whites to experience serious psychological distress, although Whites with serious psychological distress were more likely than these groups to have a long-term disability.

Several possibilities for understanding the failure to uncover an exposure dynamic in the model turn on the potential intersectional effects of age and gender, as well as several other covariates that seem to confound the linkages in the model (e.g., issues of stigma, social support, education).

This study (1) extends the racial/ethnic disparities in exposure-vulnerability framework by including factors measuring chronic medical illness and disability which: (2) explicitly test exposure and vulnerability hypotheses in minority populations; (3) develop and test the causal linkages in the hypothesized processes, based on innovations in general structural equation models, and lastly; (4) use national population estimates of these conditions which are rarely, if ever, investigated in this kind of causal framework.