According to the technical advice from the government of Japan, continuous walking distance tends to range from 500 m to 700 m and the distance tends to be shortened as people get older. In the literature, it was found that (1) 65% of elderly persons are satisfied if the interval between resting places is shorter than 100 m; and (2) 70% of elderly persons are satisfied if its interval is shorter than 50 m. In particular, when walking around Tokyo central station and Otemachi station, continuous walking distance is more than 100 m. Although continuous walking distance tends to be longer than 100 m, a sufficient number of resting places is not provided. To make urban space more walkable for elderly persons, continuous walking distance needs to be decreased by increasing the number of resting places. However, the relationship between the continuous walking distance distribution and the density of resting places has not been sufficiently theoretically investigated.
In this article, in order to evaluate not only the nearest neighbour resting place but also the nearness of all neighbour resting places, maximum continuous walking distance distribution and density of resting places (e.g., benches) was investigated by applying the 6th and 8th nearest neighbour Manhattan distance distributions as the substitute of the furthest neighbour distance distribution. The surroundings of Tokyo central station and Otemachi station were selected as the empirical study area. It was found that (1) the probability that the 6th nearest neighbour distance between resting places (including flower beds used as resting places) is longer than 100 m is 0.98; and (2) if its probability is less than 0.2, the number of resting places is increased to 436 which is approximately 4.5 times greater than the present number, 97.
Based on these theoretical investigations, we proposed the following practical ways rather than increasing the number of benches per se. First, flower beds are improved such that their edges have the appropriate width to provide resting places. Second, stairs are improved to provide resting places. In particular, on the eastern side of Tokyo station at Yaesu gate, the number of resting places needs to be drastically increased. Improvement of stairs is a practical way because stairs are already used as resting places. Third, a practical way would be to provide resting places that are not for sitting.
