Eng and McCormack investigate whether neighbourhood walkability and place attachment operate independently or interactively in shaping walking behaviour. Their study separates place identity from place dependence and distinguishes recreational from transportation walking, resisting the common assumption that objectively walkable street patterns generate uniform behavioural outcomes. The conceptual contribution is conditionality: attachment, urban form and movement relate differently depending on the type of walking and the form of attachment under consideration. Methodologically, the paper combines spatial measures of neighbourhood form with survey-based psychological constructs, allowing physical configuration and experiential relation to be analysed within the same model without collapsing one into the other. The study bridges active-transport research, environmental psychology and urban design. Its wider intellectual value lies in showing that accessibility is not merely a geometric property of streets; it becomes socially and behaviourally consequential through residents’ identification with, dependence on and repeated use of the neighbourhood environments through which they move.
