Pedestrian-friendly Environment Research Articles

URBAN DESIGN QUALITIES OF EMBONG MALANG CORRIDOR, SURABAYA CITY

The Embong Malang Corridor is located between Kedungdoro District and Genteng District, Surabaya City. Jalan Embong Malang is a secondary arterial road that has strategic significance in the context of city development where this corridor features several commercial buildings on both sides of the road. Pedestrian paths on the Jalan Embong Malang Corridor are available along the north and south sides, becoming a vital means for people visiting the Embong Malang Corridor to move between buildings. However, there are problems related to the qualities of the urban design in this corridor, which directly impacts the walkability and functionality of the pedestrian path for pedestrians. This research aims to find out the condition of urban design qualities in the Embong Malang Corridor. This research method uses observations made to evaluate the existing condition of the corridor, relying on descriptive analysis to explain various related aspects. The results of the analysis show that there are still deficiencies in several aspects of urban design qualities, especially in the enclosure, complexity, and coherence variables. This evaluation provides important insights into corridor improvement and development efforts and encourages further attention to aspects of urban design to create a more pedestrian-friendly environment.

Pedestrian mobility and University campus accessibility: an analysis of student preferences

Prioritizing pedestrian mobility is crucial to foster urban liveability and sustainability, particularly on university campuses that are experienced by students. This paper examines the University of Catania (Italy) campus, a significant open space facing accessibility challenges. Two surveys were conducted within a Living Lab framework to assess student opinions on campus walking experiences and identify key criteria for promoting walking to and within the campus. The Chi-square Automatic Interaction Detector (CHAID) algorithm and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) were chosen for the analysis, deriving insights for policy-makers and mobility managers to enhance accessibility and encourage active mobility. The specific case study demonstrates the importance of creating pedestrian-friendly environments to foster sustainable lifestyles by addressing accessibility barriers in large open spaces. However, this research provides a wider framework which is applicable to urban planning in similar contexts, emphasizing the pivotal role of pedestrian-centric design in creating vibrant and sustainable university environments.

Design Strategies to Improve Metro Transit Station Walking Environments: Five Stations in Chongqing, China

While transit-oriented development (TOD) has been widely adopted in urban design alongside the expansion of urban metro transit, the creation of pedestrian-friendly environments has often been overlooked during implementation. This has resulted in a lower walking advantage around metro transit stations. To address this issue and encourage walking and public transport use in metro transit station areas, this study undertook a quantitative comparative analysis of the pedestrian environment in five Chongqing metro transit station areas. The analysis focused on three key dimensions: “comprehensive evaluation”, “basic scale”, and “structural quality”. The comprehensive evaluation considered factors such as the pedestrian catchment area ratio, POI kernel density distribution, and crowd agglomeration. The basic scale dimension comprised floor area ratio, building density, pedestrian road density, and the quantity of station entrances and exits. Finally, structural quality factors included land use type mixing degree, POI function mixing degree, intersection connectivity, median street length, pedestrian route directness, and green view index. Based on these analyses, this study proposes a series of pedestrian environment design strategies including land use and transportation. The strategies for land use advocate for “developing compact and diverse land use”, “strengthening attraction of station center”, “positioning large projects on the edge”, “restricting private transportation capabilities”. The strategies for transportation consist of “increasing pedestrian road density”, “traffic calming organization”, “subdivision of road types”, and “three-dimensional pedestrian traffic system”. These strategies aim to create a more humanized and environmentally friendly pedestrian environment, proactively rise to the challenge of climate change, thereby cultivating sustainable urban development.

Strategies and Implications that Can be Used to Improve Walkability through Urban Design

Designing spaces for walking has become popular in the belief that it contributes positively to health status, environmental conservation, economic development, and social coherence. As such there is increasing need to assess how walkable our cities are so that we can plan better for their future. “Walkability” refers to how enjoyable it is to walk around an area and it forms an integral part of urban design that helps make a city healthy, sustainable and lively. This paper aims at exploring deeply into urban design’s role in promoting walkability within different settings with researches findings as well as real life examples being highlighted on various ways on how best pedestrian friendly environments can be developed. In addition to this it also examines the benefits realized by having more walk able towns in terms of environment efficiency and economy opportunities as well as drawbacks faced when bringing about this aspect. Besides linking past studies together through this paper provides insights on relevance of the above-mentioned concept on policy makers, planners in town planning fields and designers. It gives a detailed account behind telling us that we need “walkable cities” and goes further ahead explaining what makes our cities as they are given their architecture design implications for daily footsteps in each quadrant. Keywords: Walkability, Built Environment, Pedestrian Safety, Urban Design, Neighbourhood Design.

The walkability concept based on pedestrian perceptions in Bandung City Square, Indonesia

The concept of walkability is about the provision of a pedestrian-friendly environmental condition that provides security, comfort and safety, and offers visuals for pedestrians. The Bandung City Square Area has various attractions which all promote walking activities. However, the presence of street vendors, the lack of facilities for the disabled, inadequate vegetation, crossings, and supporting facilities, and also illegal parking have caused problems, which have rendered the pedestrian-friendly environmental aspects not being able to be fulfilled. This study aims to assess the walkability of streets in Bandung City Square Area, using aspect of walkability based on pedestrian perception as users. The research was conducted using the Global Walkability Index and Multicriteria Satisfaction Analysis, based on pedestrian perception surveys. The results showed that, the existing conditions of streets’ walkability in Bandung City Square Area is Waiting to Walk, which is adequate for walking. For example, five parameters, namely the availability of crossings, security against crime, disabled infrastructure, grade safety of crossing, and motorist behavior were found to be below average. It can also be concluded that, three parameters, namely crossing safety, security against crime, and disabled infrastructure require immediate attentions. The overall results of the study suggested that, improvement of streets’ walkability is needed by focusing on parameters that are below-average, thus requiring immediate attentions. Further research is recommended to find effective improvements for streets’ walkability, based on the pedestrian perception to have a pedestrian-friendly environment in Bandung City Square Area.

Assessment and Policy Interventions for Neighborhood Walkability Improvement

One of the most common forms of physical activity is walking which is the mother of all the modes of transport which provides inexpensive and equal transportation options to improve residents’ health and quality of life. Due to several associated advantages such as wellbeing of residents and improving health, reducing air pollution, traffic congestion and decreasing energy consumption, walking has become an interesting topic for researchers. To have modern cities with highly efficient transportation facilities which support walking, cities and neighbourhoods are trying to promote a pedestrian-friendly environment. As a result, walkability is a sustainable concept to improve the liveability of growing cities that describes the level of capability of the built environments to support walking for multiple purposes including transport, leisure and exercise purposes. Although measurement of walkability includes several methods and approaches, this research has emphasized on the walkability index as well as neighbourhoods features that influence the willingness of people to walk. Since Lucknow is not considered a walkable city, it is valuable to investigate how this city has tackled this issue. Therefore, for better interpretation, one such neighbourhood in Lucknow was selected to examine the level of walkability and the factors affect that

Regionalization and Recent Immigrants’ Access to Jobs: An Analysis of Commuting in Canadian Metropolitan Areas

Examining the transportation modes used to commute by the growing numbers of immigrants locating in medium and small metropolitan areas, this study investigates the social geographies of mobility inequality, the uneven distribution of transportation burdens and benefits. Using microdata from the 2016 Census of Canada, we compare immigrants’ propensity to commute by car, transit, and active modes (cycling and walking) among large, medium, and small metropolitan areas and we analyze the varying determinants of commuting mode in each context. In every metropolitan context, recent immigrants are more likely than established immigrants and the Canadian-born to commute on transit or by active modes. Although recent immigrants’ use of public transportation declines from large to medium and small metropolitan areas, social differentials in reliance on public transportation persist. Women, workers who are not married, people who identify as non-White and non-Aboriginal and workers who do not have dependent children use transit and active modes more than other workers. Recent immigrant women’s reliance on alternative modes is striking in metropolitan areas of all sizes. The findings indicate that policies encouraging immigrants to settle in medium and small metropolitan areas should also include investments in public transportation and pedestrian-friendly environments to reduce mobility inequality and enhance equitable access to employment.

Walking accessibility to non-work facilities and travel patterns in suburban new towns

Previous research on the self-containment of new towns has focused on access to employment and commute travel; little research has been documented regarding access to non-work facilities and its relation to non-work active travel, overlooking an important aspect to assessing the self-containment of new towns. Drawing on multiple sources of data in Hong Kong, we measure walking accessibility to three main types of non-work facilities (markets, restaurants and parks) as major destinations for non-work travel. Through a series of statistical analysis, we investigate in detail the effects of accessibility on the probability and duration of home-based walking trips. Our findings indicate that: (1) new towns were more disadvantaged and less equitable in terms of the accessibility to non-work facilities than urban areas; and (2) accessibility increased both the likelihood and duration of new town residents' walking trips particularly for grocery-shopping and dining-out purposes. The findings indicate that enhancing accessibility to non-work facilities in new towns can be beneficial in terms of both achieving self-containment and promoting more sustainable travel behaviour. Recommendations are proposed accordingly to help create more pedestrian-friendly environment, and balanced provision of non-work facilities in and around new towns and other suburban developments.

Improving a pedestrian friendly environment in low income Egyptian districts

In many developing countries, districts were mainly designed for cars ratherthan pedestrians’ despite of the need for encouraging walkability. Furthermore,streets are becoming more crowded and congested with poor or even non-existentpedestrian facilities. In addition to, low income residents claimed that they sufferedfrom walking daily a distance 1-2 km without any facilities to be found in the streetwithin the district. Therefore, the aim of this research is to develop a checklist forthe factors that would aid in the decision –making process for the improvement ofpedestrian facilities in the Egyptian districts. Delphi technique is used to correlatethe urban design sustainability with both principles of walkability & pedestrianfacilities. the Result shows that the most important facility that should be appliedat first Infrastructure then followed by Side Walk, complete streets, Livability,Safety then Mobility. This list would be as a guide for the futuristic urban plannersand authorities in order to develop the pedestrian facilities in Egypt and also in another developing countries

Associations between Elderly Residents’ Supermarket Accessibility and Built Environmental Features in Seoul, Korea

Scholars have examined the relationship between destination accessibility and various pedestrian-friendly environments in neighborhoods. However, there have been few studies on whether micro-scale environmental features promote access to supermarkets. This study fills these gaps by examining the accessibility of supermarkets and the meso- and micro-scale environmental features. In particular, environmental features that pedestrians can experience at the eye-level were estimated using the Naver pedestrian direction API and semantic segmentation technique. Multivariate regression models were employed to determine whether neighborhoods with high supermarket accessibility ensure walkable environments for the elderly. Our findings have shown that the walkability differs according to different levels of supermarket accessibility. Neighborhoods with high supermarket accessibility had high density and high diversity, and they provided high-quality sidewalk pavement. Conversely, elderly residents in neighborhoods with low accessibility had to pass through more pedestrian crossing facilities and steep slopes to go to do their shopping. These results can provide insight to policymakers and planners about the uneven accessibility of supermarkets and help improve neighborhood walkability for the elderly.

Racial Differences and Pedestrian Safety: Some Evidence from Maryland and Implications for Policy

In the 1990s, federal legislation was passed requiring transportation planning to incorporate the interests of all stakeholder groups. One urban transportation mode that is often ignored is pedestrian movement. A group particularly susceptible to difficulties in this mode is the elderly. This study surveys the attitudes of senior citizens in regard to pedestrian safety and motorist interactions. We examine the attitudes of elderly pedestrians concerning many aspects of pedestrian travel. The study finds that this group often views itself as disenfranchised. This study provides insight into what areas of pedestrian activity the elderly find troublesome and looks at the differences between urban and rural attitudes in regard to this issue.The results show that African Americans and Asians have a much higher rate of positive (safety conscious) responses to the questions in the survey. This indicates that they believe that they are more aware of pedestrian safety and that they comply with laws regarding pedestrian safety at a higher rate than their Caucasian counterparts. In addition, gender and geographical location seem to impact the responses. Urban seniors have a much higher positive response rate than suburban and ex-urban seniors.A comparison with previous work finds that these attitudes expressed in the survey are at odds with the known demographic data concerning who is at higher risk to be involved in a pedestrian accident. The increased awareness on the part of urban respondents is compatible with the more pedestrian-friendly environment of urban areas, but the racial difference in responses is not compatible with the accident data.

Effects of Creating Street Greenery in Urban Pedestrian Roads on Microclimates and Particulate Matter Concentrations

Urbanization can increase artificial coverage rates and emissions by causing increases in traffic, which represents a serious health risk to pedestrians. To create pedestrian-friendly environments in urban canyons, this study examined their microclimates and air quality; methods to improve the pedestrian environment were also explored, based on the current street green space practices in Seoul, Korea. Under these current standards, the physiologically equivalent temperature (PET) of the pedestrian roads was predicted to decrease by 1.29–1.44 °C, but this was insufficient to adjust the thermal stress level. The air temperature of the pedestrian road declined slightly; fine dust concentrations increased, and ozone concentrations decreased. The effects of increasing the planting occupancy on the pedestrian environment were then simulated, which resulted in decreases in PET of 3.04–3.49 °C, depending on the floor area ratio, thereby effectively lowering the thermal stress stage. The particulate matter concentrations increased, however, and the air quality deteriorated. Therefore, street greenery planning alone cannot sufficiently improve both the microclimate and air quality of urban pedestrian roads. Thus, it is necessary to plan street greenery spaces in parallel with measures to improve air quality.

상업지역 가로공간에 대한 보행자 중심 환경 요소 분석 - 성수동 연무장길을 중심으로 -

The street space of the external environment can have a direct effect on attracting pedestrians into the interior in the indoor architectural environment. The purpose of this study is to extract images that can give the identity of commercial streets, analyze pedestrian-based pedestrian environment analysis, and analyze of the exterior environment. Street space analysis items were established through previous studies. The survey was conducted based on the analysis frame based on pedestrian, limited space within 500M of Seongsu-dong Yeonmujang-gil, and the analysis method qualitatively evaluated and described items derived from each analysis table. The results of the study are as follows. First, The narrow street space centered on pedestrians can have a higher impact on pedestrians than the road where the wide roadway travels. Second, The image of the street space from the perspective of a pedestrian can be extracted and provided as visual basic data considering pedestrians when designing based on the street space. Third, The environment of pedestrians showed high satisfaction, and accessibility and convenience were measured to be high satisfaction, but comfort, stability, and environment were measured to be low. Fourth, As a result of evaluating the external environmental elements of architecture through diagrams, commercial elements for each space for pedestrians were blocked. This study can contribute the foundation for a pedestrian-centered pedestrian-friendly environment, which is the basis for designing commercial spaces in street spaces in the future.

보행친화적 근린환경이 주택가격에 미치는 영향*

The purpose of this study is to analyze which factors of pedestrian-friendly neighborhood environments can affect housing prices on apartment complexes and low or multi-family housings in Daegu and to examine differences in between the two types. A dependent variable is the average of actual market prices per m² sold in Daegu, 2020 by each complex and independent variables consist of architectural characteristics and pedestrian environment (accessibility, comfortability, convenience and safety). The spatial regression model was used for analysis in terms of spatial relations for housing prices. As a result, the prices of apartments were likely to rise as they were close to a subway station or the density of small commercial facilties was low or the density of crosswalks was high. The prices of low or multi-family housings were possible to ascend as they were near to a subway or bus station or a high school or the density of streetlights was high. The results demonstrated that the pedestrian-friendly environment that people preferred was different from housing types and heightened housing prices. This study is very important as it analyzed the influence of the pedestrian-friendly environment on housing prices based on different housing types. This study is expected to be used for basic data of measures to create sound housing markets and promote sustainable diversification of housing types.

Examining non-linear associations between built environments around workplace and adults’ walking behaviour in Shanghai, China

Considering that most working adults spend nearly half their waking time at work, creating a supportive built environment around workplaces could be a feasible approach to maintain adequate levels of physical activity. However, the extent to which the built environment around workplaces influences walking behaviors in working adults remains unclear. Using survey data of 1009 full-time employees in Shanghai, China, this study assessed the nonlinear relationships between the built environment characteristics around workplaces and three domains of walking behaviors (commuting, utilitarian, and recreational walking). Using gradient boosting decision trees, our results showed that the built environment around workplaces is crucial for higher levels of walking behaviors, but built environment features tended to have distinctive associations with different domains of walking behaviors. Specifically, the number of physical activity facilities was positively associated with all three domains of walking behaviors, while a high floor area ratio was negatively associated with different domains of walking behaviors to some extent. Furthermore, several built environment characteristics, such as land use entropy, street view greenery, distance from home to the city center, and distance between the city center and workplaces had distinctive associations with different domains of walking behaviors. The findings of this study could provide nuanced guidance for creating pedestrian-friendly environments around workplaces to promote walking behaviors and overall physical activity levels in the working population.

The conditioned anticipation of people (CAP) model of driving in urban spaces

Despite significant gains in overall collision rates, pedestrian and bicycle safety in complete street environments remains an on-going challenge. However, urban areas with the most risk exposure for pedestrians continue to maintain lower incident rates than their suburban counterparts (“Dangerous by Design” 2021). Under most driving circumstances, the over-rehearsed nature of driving leads to a psychological state similar to self-hypnosis, where attention is subconsciously maintained on the driving task while metacognitive awareness is minimized or eliminated. This state continues until some type of conflict, uncertainty, and/or novel stimulus is presented. The primary difference in driver attention in urban environments is postulated to result from the Conditioned Anticipation of People (CAP). Based on the human neurological predisposition to recognize and fixate on human faces and figures, we hypothesize that in areas where drivers have been conditioned to expect human presence, low-level metacognition is preemptively re-engaged to address their presence, resulting in higher attentional resource expenditure and increased distraction management. Such conditioning may be generated by contextual features common to pedestrian-friendly environments but, necessarily, must be reinforced over time by the Actual Presence of People (APP). CAP driver engagement is limited by the perceptual abilities of the driver such that at higher speeds or within wider corridors, the presence of pedestrians is more difficult to perceive. This results in a non-CAP attention pattern, exhibiting minimal metacognitive activity, high levels of automaticity, and reduced attention. This model was generated based on the observation that vulnerable user presence and the roadway contextual features that support the driver's ability to see vulnerable users were related to attention data measured during the SHRP2 Naturalistic Driving Study. Visually discernable features that were associated with vulnerable user presence had relationships with attention and large effect sizes (η2 > 0.5). Contextual features that had relationships with vulnerable user presence, but minimal visual impact or interfered with the driver’s ability to see vulnerable users had no relationship to driver attention. This behavioral pattern provides supportive evidence for the proposed model.

The Feasibility of Information-Entropy-Based Behavioral Analysis for Detecting Environmental Barriers.

The enhancement of physical activity is highly correlated with the conditions of the built environment. Walking is considered to be a fundamental daily physical activity, which requires an appropriate environment. Therefore, the barriers of the built environment should be identified and addressed. Barriers can act as external stimuli for pedestrians, so pedestrians may diversely respond to them. Based on this consideration, this study examines the feasibility of information-entropy-based behavioral analysis for the detection of environmental barriers. The physical responses of pedestrians were collected using an inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensor in a smartphone. After the acquired data were converted to behavioral probability distributions, the information entropy of each grid cell was calculated. The grid cells whereby the participants indicated that environmental barriers were present yielded relatively high information entropy values. The findings of this study will facilitate the design of more pedestrian-friendly environments and the development of diverse approaches that utilize citizens for monitoring the built environment.

Street pedestrianization in urban districts: Economic impacts in Spanish cities

This study analyzes the influence of pedestrianization of urban space on the revenues of surrounding retail stores. Pedestrianization refers to the conversion of street use from vehicles to a walkable environment. We compiled a unique transaction dataset containing the estimates of sales volumes for stores across Spain and combine it with data from Open Street Map to provide the history of land-use changes at the street-level. Based on these high-granular datasets, we apply a difference-in-differences empirical method to measure the economic impact of pedestrian intervention. The results show that stores located in pedestrian environments tend to record higher sales volumes than stores located in non-pedestrian environments. We further analyze the mechanisms underlying this revenue-boosting effect and find that a key factor is the store density of the pedestrianized place, while geographic location is insignificant. This finding suggests that there are no differentiation impacts on stores' revenue based on whether pedestrianization occurs in the city center or periphery. Store category also acts as an important moderator for revenue impacts, with positive effects observed mostly for the café or restaurant category. Our results provide suggestive evidence that people prefer a pedestrian-friendly environment to a vehicle-oriented one for non-tradable, local consumption activities. This research provides evidence-based policy implications for urban planners interested in making smart, sustainable cities.

A Network-Based Approach for Reducing Pedestrian Exposure to PM2.5 Induced by Road Traffic in Seoul

Urban plans for pedestrian-friendly environments by reducing exposure to air pollutants and enhancing movement are crucial for public health and accessibility of social infrastructure. Here, we develop a novel network analysis-based approach, which identifies pivotal local walkways that lower exposure risk to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) while improving the urban landscape connectivity. We employ an exponential distance-decay model and partial correlation analysis to estimate traffic-induced PM2.5 and to test the relationship between the proxies and actual PM2.5 concentrations, respectively. We use a proxy for pedestrians’ PM2.5 exposure as a movement cost when conducting network analyses to compute pedestrian network centrality, reflecting both low PM2.5 exposure risk and landscape connectivity. As a result, we found a significant contribution of traffic to the estimated PM2.5 exposure and PM2.5 concentrations. We also found that walkways make a large contribution to regional connectivity regardless of the estimated PM2.5 exposure risk owing to the composition and configuration of urban landscape elements. Regarding the spatial features and planning context, this study suggests four types of pedestrian networks to provide urban authorities with useful practical information in city-wide urban plans for enhancing walkability: PM2.5 reduction required; PM2.5 reduction recommended; optimal areas; and alternatives of optimal areas.

Microscale Walkability Modelling. The Case of Athens City Centre

To date, several macro-level walkability measures have been proposed, but microscale and audit-based walkability approaches prove to be highly effective to support realistic, quick and cheap mechanisms for pedestrian-friendly environments. Yet, walkability audits are time- and cost-intensive solutions, because they require several streetscape observations. This study aims to investigate whether a multiple linear regression model of urban form- and function-related variables can effectively predict an audit-based average walkability indicator. For this purpose, we use a virtual, brief and reliable audit tool (MAPS-Mini) in Athens city centre in order to collect street-level data and in turn to construct a microscale walkability indicator (dependent variable). Moreover, our approach suggests a flexible statistical model of open-source data, with six exploratory variables of the macro-level built environment: angular integration, population density, transit stop density, pedestrian street density, retail and entertainment activity density, and building height. The results indicate that audit-based average walkability scores can be effectively estimated, as the regression model can explain about 82% of the variation. Furthermore, the density of retail and entertainment activities was indicated as the strongest correlate of more walking-friendly streetscapes, while some urban policy implications include the promotion of footpath repairs and better-engineered crossings.