Pedestrian Mobility Research Articles

Promoting pedestrian ecomobility in Riyadh City for sustainable urban development

As the world is giving climate change a higher priority, several Coalitions are working on meeting a clean and green environment (SDG 13), focusing on new streets’ design in total urban development. A previous study discussed the pedestrian mobility status in Riyadh city, with attention to sustainable mobility, considering the pedestrians’ traveling patterns that use their cars rather than public transportation. This paper investigates the Ecomobility that seeks to promote the integration of passenging, cycling, wheeling, and walking. This approach will provide better health (SDG 3), clean air, mobility and accessibility, noise avoidance, greenhouse gas emission reduction, individual cost savings, and energy efficiency (SDG 11). It analyzes the pedestrians’ traveling modes in Riyadh city through a case study of the Prince Sultan University’s (PSU) community, then evaluates the pedestrians’ environment quality in the campus surroundings. Analysis used a web-based survey referred to the PSU people, including Students, Faculty, and Staff. On the other hand, the pedestrian’s environment quality was evaluated on-site built on well-constructed criteria. The assessment’s results addressed the factors influencing pedestrian choices and underlined the barriers to transformation to Ecomobility. They revealed that around 73% of the respondents expressed willingness to transform to ecomobility modes. About 52% of the survey sample preferred the public bus option. For the non-motorized options, students preferred cycling and wheeling modes, while faculty members and staff preferred walking. Based on conclusions, recommendations are proposed to foster pedestrian ecomobility for sustainable urban development in Riyadh city.

The establishment of an intermodal walkability index for use in car oriented urban environments: The case of Nicosia

Sustainable mobility has been considered key in the pursuit of sustainable development in urban environments. During the last decades, a lot of innovative initiatives have been proposed and examined, most of them were site-specific and highly relevant to the local context. This case study review focuses on Nicosia, a car oriented, medium sized city, and attempts to define an intermodal walkability index for the city center. In a city like Nicosia where more than 90% of the daily trips are done completely by car, encouraging intermodal mobility with walking as part of the trip is an important first step to sustainable mobility. The aim of the paper is to present a model based upon the most impactful sustainability indicators when referring to pedestrian mobility, and therefore will create an intermodal walkability index for grading the walkability of an urban environment, in our case a particular, car-oriented one. The index was developed by using the latest version of pyQGIS, due to the fact that the algorithms that are being used in the calculation of this index are already part of the geospatial analysis toolbox contained within QGIS. The paper uses as a case study the municipality of Nicosia in Cyprus where it was proven that pedestrian transportation can be graded in terms of walkability from the private car drop point. The study has also discovered that the use of primary electricity generation and fossil fuels for transport can be reduced if problematic areas that have a low or negative sustainability score are managed in ways that will increase the score.

Can social capital improve the quality of life satisfaction for older adults? Focusing on the 2016 Quality of Life Survey in Gyeonggi Province, Korea

This study examines the mediating effects of social capital and neighborhood environments on older adults' quality of life satisfaction in Gyeonggi Province, Korea. The World Health Organization (WHO) has proposed guidelines for age-friendly city planning according to physical, social, economic, and health and safety domains. Based on the WHO guidelines, this study constructed a structural equation model using the “2016 Quality of Life Survey for the Residents of Gyeonggi Province.” Results show that quality of life satisfaction in older adults has a significant association with the use of neighborhood living facilities. In particular, quality of life satisfaction has significant positive associations with satisfaction levels toward pedestrian mobility and safety. These findings indicate that neighborhood environments are highly important factors for quality of life satisfaction in older adults. This study also confirms that social capital plays an important role in older adults' quality of life satisfaction. Social capital has direct positive impacts and mediating effects on quality of life satisfaction in older adults. Finally, this study concludes that neighborhood facilities, walking environments, and neighborhood-level social capital are the most important components in promoting quality of life satisfaction in older adults.

Strategy for sustainable urban revitalization in a heritage tourist city with a Sub-humid Temperate climate

The environmental quality of urban public and tourist spaces affect the development of the activities of the large number of users in heritage cities, where the concept of sustainability continues to be one of the main interests for researchers around the world. Nowadays, numerous indices have been developed to determine the liveability of urban spaces; however, there are localities that, due to their topographical characteristics, tourist and social activities require methods to generate revitalisation strategies according to their characteristics. In this study, an exploratory longitudinal method was used in a central street of a world heritage city with a temperate sub-humid climate as a case study, with the objective of favouring, by passive means, thermal habitability conditions in a heritage urban space focused on promoting pedestrian mobility. As a result, an urban revitalisation strategy for the benefit of society and tourists in heritage cities was obtained to strengthen sustainable urban mobility strategies.

Pedestrian crossing light violation in Costa Rica: exploring factors affecting mid-block crossing behavior

It is necessary to analyze pedestrian behavior at crossings to improve their safety and mobility. Mid-block pedestrian crossings are structures that facilitate the mobility of pedestrians, safeguarding them from vehicular traffic; however, illegal crossing by pedestrians is an everyday occurrence and represents a risk to their safety. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the relationship between different human and road factors and the decision to illegally cross signalized mid-block crossings. Several human factors such as age, gender, waiting time in traffic light, use of the pushbutton and individual or group crossing, as well as road characteristics such as the length of traffic light phase, length of crossing, and vehicular volume were analyzed. To collect information about these variables this study recorded a one-hour video in six selected crosswalks within the Montes de Oca County in Costa Rica. A total of 1,707 crossings were recorded, 10.6% of which corresponded to instances of illegal crossing. After applying a logit model, this research found that traffic volume, pedestrian red-light time, waiting time, vehicle illegal crossing and group crossings reduced the probability of violations by pedestrians. On the other hand, minimum traffic light time and crossing length increased the possibility of pedestrian illegal crossings. This study concluded that the traffic light cycle is an important variable that must be rigorously analyzed to ensure pedestrian's compliance with traffic lights, which will improve the safety of the pedestrian mid-block crossings.

An Extended Usability and UX Evaluation of a Mobile Application for the Navigation of Individuals with Blindness and Visual Impairments Outdoors-An Evaluation Framework Based on Training.

Navigation assistive technologies have been designed to support the mobility of people who are blind and visually impaired during independent navigation by providing sensory augmentation, spatial information and general awareness of their environment. This paper focuses on the extended Usability and User Experience (UX) evaluation of BlindRouteVision, an outdoor navigation smartphone application that tries to efficiently solve problems related to the pedestrian navigation of visually impaired people without the aid of guides. The proposed system consists of an Android application that interacts with an external high-accuracy GPS sensor tracking pedestrian mobility in real-time, a second external device specifically designed to be mounted on traffic lights for identifying traffic light status and an ultrasonic sensor for detecting near-field obstacles along the route of the blind. Moreover, during outdoor navigation, it can optionally incorporate the use of Public Means of Transport, as well as provide multiple other uses such as dialing a call and notifying the current location in case of an emergency. We present findings from a Usability and UX standpoint of our proposed system conducted in the context of a pilot study, with 30 people having varying degrees of blindness. We also received feedback for improving both the available functionality of our application and the process by which the blind users learn the features of the application. The method of the study involved using standardized questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. The evaluation took place after the participants were exposed to the system’s functionality via specialized user-centered training sessions organized around a training version of the application that involves route simulation. The results indicate an overall positive attitude from the users.

Crowd dynamics research in the era of Covid-19 pandemic: Challenges and opportunities

With the issues of crowd control and physical distancing becoming central to disease prevention measures, one would expect that crowd research should become a focus of attention during the Covid-19 pandemic era. However, I will show, based on a variety of metrics, that not only has this not been the case, but also, the first two years of the pandemic have posed an undisputable setback to the development and growth of crowd science. Without intervention, this could potentially aggravate further and cause a long-lasting recession in this field. This article, in addition to documenting and highlighting this issue, aims to outline potential avenues through which crowd research can reshape itself in the era of Covid-19 pandemic, maintain its pre-pandemic momentum and even further expand the diversity of its topics. Despite significant changes that the pandemic has brought to human life, issues related to congregation and mobility of pedestrians, building fires, crowd incidents, rallying crowds and the like have not disappeared from societies and remain relevant. Moreover, the diversity of pandemic-related problems itself creates a rich ground for making novel scientific discoveries. This could provide grounds for establishing fresh dimensions in crowd dynamics research. These potential new dimensions extend to all areas of this field including numerical and experimental investigations, crowd psychology and applications of computer vision and artificial intelligence methods in crowd management. The Covid-19 pandemic may have posed challenges to crowd researchers but has also created ample potential opportunities. This is further evidenced by reviewing efforts taken thus far in pandemic-related crowd research.

How effective are pedestrian crash prevention systems in improving pedestrian safety? Harnessing large-scale experimental data

Over the past few years, the number of fatalities and severe injuries of vulnerable road users, particularly pedestrians, has risen substantially. Clearly, the safe mobility of pedestrians is critical in our transportation system. Technology can help reduce vehicle–pedestrian crashes, fatalities, and injuries. Emerging technologies such as pedestrian crash prevention (PCP) systems utilized in on-road vehicles have the potential to mitigate pedestrian crash severity or prevent crashes. However, the reliability and effectiveness of these technologies have remained uncertain. This study contributes toward understanding the effectiveness of PCP systems utilized in on-road vehicles with a low level of automation by investigating two crossing and one longitudinal scenarios. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety field test data from 2018 to 2021 is harnessed, where several on-road vehicles and their PCP systems are evaluated in terms of safety. The large-scale experimental dataset is comprised of 3095 tests of 91 vehicles with different sizes, makes, and models. The empirical results indicate that in hazardous pedestrian-vehicle conflict situations, the performance of PCP systems has been improved during recent years. The test data shows that some pedestrians were undetected in some tests, but on average, in 70% of the tests, the PCP systems avoided pedestrian crashes. However, for the occurred crashes, PCP systems, on average, were able to mitigate impact speeds of >50%. In real-life situations, this could translate to substantial reductions in injury and fatality risk. Through rigorous analysis, the associations of key factors in the studied scenarios and the performance of PCP systems are explored and discussed in this paper. The modeling results show that increasing the maximum deceleration rate of the PCP system and lower weight of vehicles can significantly improve the performance of the PCP system by decreasing the speed at impact with pedestrians. The average maximum deceleration utilized in PCP systems has been increased over time from 7.48 m/s2 in 2018 to 9.36 m/s2 in 2021. This can be one of the reasons behind the improvement of PCP systems during recent years.

Pedestrian volume prediction with high spatiotemporal granularity in urban areas by the enhanced learning model

Pedestrian volume prediction is a key strategy to explore the spatial patterns of pedestrian mobility and develop urban policies. However, due to the expensive costs of field sampling, most existing models are established on insufficient pedestrian samples and obtain limited prediction performance. Therefore, this study proposes an enhanced learning model for pedestrian volume prediction with high spatiotemporal granularity in urban areas. The enhanced learning model is applied to a case study in the central business district (CBD) of the city of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. More than 1400 features are constructed for pedestrian estimation, covering macro aspects of transportation, socioeconomics, road networks, time, land use and place of interest. Compared with the optimal supervised learning model of LightGBM (Light Gradient Boosting Machine), the LightGBM-based enhanced learning model can significantly improve the performance of pedestrian estimation with root-mean-square error (RMSE) reduced by 41.75% and R-squared (R2) improved by 27.75%. The important parameters (i.e., spatial resolution, combination parameter) of the enhanced learning model are validated to significantly affect model performance. According to the spatiotemporal analysis of pedestrian volume in geographic information system (GIS) maps, different measures are proposed to optimize urban mobility and improve city management.

Automatic Generation of Urban Road 3D Models for Pedestrian Studies from LiDAR Data

The point clouds acquired with a mobile LiDAR scanner (MLS) have high density and accuracy, which allows one to identify different elements of the road in them, as can be found in many scientific references, especially in the last decade. This study presents a methodology to characterize the urban space available for walking, by segmenting point clouds from data acquired with MLS and automatically generating impedance surfaces to be used in pedestrian accessibility studies. Common problems in the automatic segmentation of the LiDAR point cloud were corrected, achieving a very accurate segmentation of the points belonging to the ground. In addition, problems caused by occlusions caused mainly by parked vehicles and that prevent the availability of LiDAR points in spaces normally intended for pedestrian circulation, such as sidewalks, were solved in the proposed methodology. The innovation of this method lies, therefore, in the high definition of the generated 3D model of the pedestrian space to model pedestrian mobility, which allowed us to apply it in the search for shorter and safer pedestrian paths between the homes and schools of students in urban areas within the Big-Geomove project. Both the developed algorithms and the LiDAR data used are freely licensed for their use in further research.

Defining a Digital System for the Pedestrian Network as a Conceptual Implementation Framework

In cities today, the digitalization of mobility is one of the most crucial tools that link each single mobility service providers (e.g., ride sharing, public transportation, air travel, etc.) to users. Based on the smart pedestrian network model, the purpose of this study is to initially provide the requirements towards the digitalization of a pedestrian network model and subsequently to draft an institutional framework towards the effective implementation and management of pedestrian mobility that will develop/create a pedestrian network as a new structure in the city. The methodology is applied in three phases, with three separate approaches: “desk approach” for a data gathering standard that is knowledge-based and connected to walkability; a “digitalization approach” for citizen and stakeholder participation in policy co-creation; and a “business approach”. A business approach is defined as a set of operations that takes one or more types of input and produces a customer-valued outcome. In this case, customers are citizens and the business approach by applying a digital system is assessing policies and finding/defining an optimized combination of shared applicable/effective policies to implement the pedestrian network. By boosting an innovative linkage of these three phases, digitalization of the pedestrian network has great potential to improve the walkability planning process and therefore to create more sustainable and livable urban spaces.

Movilidad fragmentada y sus impactos socioterritoriales:Unidad Territorial Atlixcáyotl, Puebla

En México, la movilidad de las ciudades ha sido afectada por patrones de crecimien-to urbano que privilegian intereses particulares y generan cambios acelerados, como ha sucedido en la ciudad de Puebla; si bien se han construido muchas obras viales con grandes inversiones de gobierno para mejorar la movilidad, muchos ciudadanos enfrentan condiciones difíciles al desplazarse porque es un modelo de ciudad pensa-do para el automóvil. En esta investigación se analizan las condiciones de movilidad peatonal que padece la población menos favorecida y vulnerable de varios barrios de la Unidad Territorial Atlixcáyotl debido al impacto socioterritorial derivado de la frag-mentación del territorio, en especial los habitantes del barrio de San Miguel La Rosa. De esta manera, se evidencia cómo en la ciudad de Puebla las acciones gubernamentales no han atendido las verdaderas necesidades sociales, sino que favorecen intereses económicos y de protagonismo político, situación que genera una nueva realidad que sufren algunos barrios de la ciudad.

Improving sustainable mobility in university campuses: the case study of Sapienza University

The pursue of sustainable mobility is one of the greatest environmental challenges nowadays. It requires a people mind shift, where the use of private vehicles give way to different modes of public transport like buses, bicycles, car sharing, electric cars, and walking lanes. This new call to make mobility sustainable has already been undertaken by policymakers and public managers in many urban contexts around the world, as well as, more recently, by the managers of university systems. The paper shows the work developed in 2018 for the Sapienza Sustainable University Mobility Plan (SUMP). The study stems from the need to understand and improve, in the sustainability direction, modes of travel for the students and staff of one of the oldest universities in the world, and one of the largest in Europe (112,142 students enrolled and 23,101 between academic staff and no academic staff), with its premises located in a complex and challenging urban context such as the city of Rome. The SUMP has been developed in two phases. The first one investigated travel patterns and the reasons for the modal shift and highlighted the main issues. The second phase defined strategies and interventions to be implemented in the short, medium, and long term to make students and staff’s mobility more environmentally sustainable. The methodology used in the fact-finding stage was the online survey that was carried out through the use of a diversified questionnaire for staff and students of the University. The sample of students who participated in the survey amounted to 14,719 units, while the sample of faculty and staff was 9,403. The main questionnaire outcomes showed that the attitudes recorded were largely different between faculty and staff and students. While for the first ones the choice of private vehicles is the first option (36%), for students public transport is the prevailing preference (78%). According to the critical aspects found in this first stage, the SUMP objectives were defined, leading to the identification of macro-areas of intervention and specific actions. At a policy and strategic level, the attention was focused on the guidelines issued by the United Nations, the European Commission, and the Network of Universities for Sustainable Development, of which Sapienza University is a member. For this reason, the identification of strategies and interventions results from the combination of the first phase analysis, the Sapienza Governance objectives, and the national and international context in which the SUMP was drafted. Five macro-areas of intervention have been identified: Smart Strategies, Pedestrian Mobility, Cycling, Local Public Transport, Private Transport, and for each one specific intervention to be implemented in different time frames have been defined.

Experimental models of pedestrian flows as support to design new sustainable paths in urban context

In recent years, the theme of sustainable development of cities and inland areas of our country, beside attention to environmental protection and the safety of road networks, has contributed to give added value to the soft mobility topic. Attention has been paid to the pedestrian mobility which today represents a great opportunity for urban regeneration and the enhancement of historic centers and villages. The resilience and flexible use of public space have become a more pressing need following the COVID-19 pandemic.The research focuses on the pedestrian mobility models; after an analysis of the sector literature, some problems of urban pedestrian circulation have been examined in order to define temporal impedance functions starting from experimental surveys; some models for the estimation of the running speed have been specified and calibrated in different environmental conditions.

The City of Zagreb Lower Town Urban mobility development program

Common development issues in historic city centers are dense urban blocks (with buildings that do not follow modern construction standards), narrow traffic corridors, and low mobility of pedestrians and cyclists. Modern solutions, like smart traffic control systems, parking restrictions, the introduction of speed limitations and dynamic yellow lanes, increasing control of existing yellow lanes, and the establishment of multimodal solutions, are introduced to eliminate traffic problems in these areas. When it comes to the abovementioned development issues, the historic Lower Town area in Croatia’s capital Zagreb, with residential and commercial buildings and infrastructure dating from the beginning of the 20th century, is no exception. Following a very strong earthquake that hit in March 2020, severely damaging the structures in Zagreb’s historical center, a program for the complete reconstruction of this area is being developed, which will contain the Urban mobility development program. This paper presents the process and the results of Zagreb City’s Lower Town urban transport reprogramming performed by the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Civil Engineering. The main premise of the Zagreb historic center reconstruction program is that the quality of life in the area will be improved through the regeneration of neglected and unorganized city blocks, as well as the planning and construction of new public spaces. The aspiration is the transformation of Lower Town into the "15-minute city". The prerequisite for this is (1) improved mobility and (2) reshaped transportation system, with the emphasis on cost-effective technical solutions and the integration of zero-emission modes of transport, and green mobility. At the same time, it will be necessary to preserve buildings and infrastructure that are part of the identity of the City and to prevent the transformation of the reconstruction process into a process of gentrification.

Co-design of public spaces for pedestrian use and soft-mobility in the perspective of communities reappropriation and activation

Safe mobility in urban areas can be approached by the point view of urban design oriented through community integration and development. At the scale of the neighbourhood mobility, it is assumed as key access for the comparison and the linking between local mobility policies and redevelopment of public space by the one hand, spontaneous reappropriations of public spaces as emerging since the pandemic, by the other. A peculiar case study, a neighbourhood in the north of Milan (Dergano), is useful to challenge pedestrian mobility policies in relation to co-design of safer and liveable street spaces. It is part of an ongoing research related to the identification and design − in collaboration with local partners and citizens − of an emerging ecosystem made of innovative practices, format of services, spatial devices and forms of collaboration. Spatial and environmental criticalities in the area are caused by scarce presence of green and pedestrian spaces, car prevailing streets − but also overabundance of abandoned and underused former productive sites. The context is experiencing, in the last years, a phenomenon of re-appropriation of urban open spaces through the organization of cultural and educational small activities in support of the categories which are suffering more the pandemic’s restriction such as children, elderly people, mothers and parents in general, poor families, foreign new inhabitants. Those practices could be integrated into a wider reorganization of mobility and in the redesign of more comfortable streets, which is partially ongoing by means of the Milan Municipality, in the perspective of the achievement of the 15-minute city model, accessible and rich in services. The paper describes policies and emerging practices in order to produce a more comprehensive representation of this double perspective. The result is narrative of the neighbourhood by the point of view of pedestrian safer areas and of new possibilities to connect traditional public services and new uses of the site. In this direction, the proposed approach could be further tested through the application of immersive understanding and of similar design tools in broader contexts and situations, verifying the effectiveness of an open methodology to shorten the distance between bottom-up and top-down initiatives regarding pedestrian and public space.

Clustering Approach to Generate Pedestrian Traffic Pattern Groups


 
 
 
 This study shows the development of patterns of temporal hourly volume distributions in an urban area in Costa Rica, based on a cluster analysis of pedestrian data. This study aims to establish specific pattern groups for the temporal variation of weekday pedestrian volumes applying cluster analysis in the central business district of Guadalupe in San José. For 46 counting sites, vectors with the weekday hourly factors, the proportion of the daily pedestrian traffic, were estimated. A hierarchical cluster method was implemented to group the vectors of hourly factors from the different counting sites. This method groups elements by minimizing the Euclidean distance between elements of the same group and, at the same time, maximizing the distances from elements of other groups. In addition, the groups found through this analysis are related to land use through buffers of different radios. Eight temporal pattern groups were obtained through cluster analysis. Two pattern groups account for more than two-thirds of the sites included in the study. Fisher’s exact independence test shows that banks and public services could explain some of the patterns observed. The classification of 46 counting sites based on temporal distribution patterns, and the relation with the establishments in the area, allows a simplification of the information and facilitates an understanding of the pedestrian mobility in the area. Further research is required that leads towards geographical elements that could explain the differences in temporal and mobility patterns.
 
 
 

Evaluasi Aspek Desain Jalan Pada Jalur Pedestrian Di Jalan Lingkar Luar Kebun Raya Bogor

Bogor population density is 1.030.720 people, with the highest density district is Central Bogor (12.758 population/km2). Many centers of activity have resulted high population mobility. For that, adequate facilities and infrastructure is required to meet the needs of pedestrian mobility, as known as pedestrian way. To realize the effectiveness and avoidance of accident risk, good street design is a must in the pedestrian way design as public facility. Therefore, evaluation of street design aspect on pedestrian way at Bogor Botanical Garden ringroad is needed to study the quality of the walkability. Using the Pedestrian Environmental Quality Index (PEQI) method, the effectiveness of the pedestrian pathway will be assessed to create safe and appropriate pedestrian way. From the results of the evaluation of 46 subsegments, there are 10 subsegments classified as I (very high), 18 as class II (high), 8 as class III (average), and 10 as class IV (minimum). Overall, the pedestrian way of Bogor Botanical Garden Outer Ringroad has final score of 65.56 which categorized as class II (high). The design recommendations have the concept of active living with improving the public health through increased physical activity.

A Stated Preference Survey for Evaluating Young Pedestrians’ Preferences on Walkways

For promoting pedestrian mobility, the quality levels of pedestrian paths should be increased. Many researchers suggest methodologies for determining the pedestrian level of service. Among these, some studies consider both paths’ physical characteristics and users’ perception about the walkways. Investigating users’ perceptions represents a good strategy for implementing interventions aimed at increasing the quality of service. The aim is recording pedestrians’ perceptions about the characteristics of the path and detecting the choices they would make in a hypothetical scenario. This work proposes the design of a Stated Preferences survey and the analysis of the preliminary results. A questionnaire was sent out to a sample of 240 pedestrians, prevalently students, about a walkway located in the University Campus of Rende (Italy). The collected data were analyzed by means of a discrete choice model for assessing the importance assigned by pedestrians to each aspect included in the analysis. The results showed that the environment can be considered as the most important aspect for young pedestrians, while the width of the path is not significant. The outcomes also highlighted the aspects it is necessary to change in order to make pedestrian paths increasingly attractive and to encourage users towards active mobility.

From ‘Orthogonal’ Sprawl to ‘Curvilinear’ Dense: Assessing Accessibility Indices for Urban Networks of Social Housing in UAE

The shift towards designing more dense urban social housing neighbourhoods has started with the embracing of urban sustainability principles by the UAE government since the beginning of the 21st century. The assessment of the recent neighbourhoods designs still lacks concrete evidence about their expected performance especially for pedestrian mobility networks. This concern is gaining further significance with the noticeable tendency of most of the recent urban designs towards developing organic and curvilinear networks instead of the conventional orthogonal grids of the mobility networks that distinguished the traditionally designed neighbourhoods in the country. To bridge this gap, the research comparatively and quantitively analysed the accessibility performance indicators of both of the traditional and the modern urban network designs. The research adopted the Case Study method with quantitative investigation tools that are fundamental to Urban Network Analysis, especially in relation to Accessibility. The simulation of the urban networks of two selected urban social housing neighbourhood forms, representing the networks of both the traditional urban orthogonal sprawl and the recent curvilinear dense one, were utilized employing the UNA toolbox. Three complementary Accessibility Indices were analysed including: Reach, Gravity and Straightness. Through this analysis, the aspects that affected the accessibility performance of the two urban form paradigms and the problems that have been associated with the designs of the urban networks of the new social housing projects, have been revealed. It became evident that the denser urban form was not sufficient in enabling more accessible facilities in the recent neighbourhoods designs. The orthogonal grid, even with its very low Floor Area Ratio showed better performance of in the three accessibility indices especially the Straightness index, if compared with the much denser curvilinear grid with it ‘naturally longer’ pattern. The inefficient number and the inappropriate distribution locally provided facilities in relation to the pedestrian mobility networks have contributed to these disappointing results. So, it is essential to include this and/or similar urban network quantitative simulation tools to help develop genuinely sustainable urban forms for this significant type of urban development in the UAE cities.