Sustainable Walkability and Place Identity

The sustainability of a place depends on a series of factors which contribute to the quality of life, sense of place and recognition of identity. An activity like walking, which in itself is obviously “sustainable”, can become non sustainable if the context in which it is carried out does not meet the conditions for an adequate quality of life. This work is aimed at proposing the analytical method of PlaceMaker to identify the elements that do not feature in traditional mapping and which constitute the contemporary identity of the places, and the relative complex map to represent those elements and support sustainable urban identity design. The method’s potential for areas with a predominantly pedestrian vocation is illustrated by means of the case study of the Ramblas in Barcelona.