Abstract
Performance of a range of urban amenities is influenced by their accessibility to pedestrians. Success in attracting pedestrians to a particular location depends on how they project visuospatial information. In this paper, we propose an original method for analysing the visuospatial integration of particular locations within a street network. As a case study we analyse the distribution of one type of urban amenities - food and drink public facilities. We represent them in a form of visibility graph as objects of navigational decisions within the street network. To explore how urban facilities, streets and pedestrian visual cognition are interrelated, we create and compare three cases: a street network visibility graph and two visibility graphs of amenities. The first graph is based on the existing, “natural” distribution, while the second is an “artificial”, fabricated version of the environment, where urban locations are redistributed evenly across the case study. We study the graphs’ global network properties by the use of small-world, and scale-free models. Our results demonstrate that views available for an urban traveller in the existing, “natural” setting had a particular structure. It is built of numerous weakly connected locations coexisting with a small number of hubs with an exceptionally large number of visual connections. Such organisation of urban visibility shows that visuospatial network shares morphological similarities with other natural networks, suggesting that common organizational principles underlie network structure.
Highlights
Walking, Activity Locations and VisibilityAs a consequence of intensified urbanization, urban planners and designers seek to identify the environmental qualities related to the walkability of our future cities
We examined the visuospatial properties of one predefined urban activity, ‘third places’ – cafés, restaurants, and other food and drink public facilities distributed within the street network
11 21 31 41 51 61 71 81 91 101 111 121 131 141 151 161 171 181 191 201 211 221 231 241 251 261 271 281 291 301 existing structure emerging from the interaction of urban components, such as street network, building uses, and pedestrian visual cognition
Summary
As a consequence of intensified urbanization, urban planners and designers seek to identify the environmental qualities related to the walkability of our future cities. Most of the existing graph approaches consider only street networks and ignore functional aspects of the built form, whereas urban uses and activities are extremely important features of the city landscape. Using a graph method that links urban form with the main cognitive property of pedestrians – their visual ability, we link morphology and cognition at the level of streets, buildings, and building entrances, where pedestrian movement becomes central to understanding urban dynamics To achieve these objectives, we analysed three cases, based on one origin, the historical centre of Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel. Small-world and scale-free properties allow classifying different networks in terms of their robustness, efficiency and heterogeneity (Barthelemy 2011; Newman 2010) We compared these cases in order to understand the impact of existing, natural visibility, and to assess the potential link of urban morphology, urban planning and design.
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