Street Quality Research Articles

Street walking quality of the ‘Centro’ district, Madrid

ABSTRACT Walking provides a number of health, social and environmental benefits for urban sustainability, which is why it has become attractive from the perspective of sustainable transport planning. The concept of walkability is related with the built environment and land use to facilitate walking to activities in an area. The aim of this work is to provide a set of street walking quality maps for the ‘Centro’ district in Madrid (Spain), covering four categories of walking needs: attractiveness, comfort, safety and accessibility. They classify the streets from least to most walkable in relation to each other. The maps are built using 21 urban environmental factors selected from the literature. The values for each factor are computed in each street from open access databases and combined following the PROMETHEE II method function in order to assign a street value for each of the four classes of walking needs.

Can Smartphones Make Smart Kids?

“Apps as Learning Tools: A Systematic Review”1 is a timely look, from a developmental and educational perspective, at the mobile device apps that even young children are using today. This review is as important to us in observing what we do not know as what we do.In a year when we are celebrating 50 years of Sesame Street as an iconic, genre-defining educational television program, we need to be reminded of just how revolutionary it was and continues to be (and how it has set the gold standard for educational media). Sesame Street dramatically changed early childhood education not only because it made preschool learning available to everyone who had a television but also because it used the unique access and attraction of television to teach in theoretically based, research-proven ways. The genius of Sesame Street is simple: education scholars conducted formative research to design programming that was pedagogically sound, and once the shows were made and shown, they conducted summative research to evaluate how effectively the programming met intended goals.2 The success of Sesame Street drew imitators, some of which were good, but most of which simply aimed to cash in on the fact that parents would encourage their children to watch a television program that was labeled educational, whether there was any research supporting that claim or not. Although there is still no requirement that educational claims made about children’s media be backed by research, concerned consumers supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics motivated a reality check in 2009, forcing a recall and refund of Baby Einstein videos.3,4Not only did the introduction of Apple’s iPhone in 2007 and iPad in 2010 (and other companies’ smartphones and tablets that followed) make screen-media content available to virtually everyone but their small size and easily navigated interfaces created a new market for educational content, or, to be more cynical, for content that parents would not feel guilty about providing to their young children because it was labeled educational. The rush to be “first to market” created a glut of apps aimed at young children. Searching key literature databases that included studies in child development for “mobile devices” and “learning” and “young children” initially yielded 1447 unique reports. After the authors screened these reports for relevance, age <6 years, and rigor of study, 34 articles on 35 study results remained.1 Notably, there were no studies of any apps that were done by app producers before introducing them to the market as educational.Mirroring what has been found with computer-based educational software with older children, the best educational outcomes were found with math and language-acquisition apps, with the largest effect sizes found in school-based uses of the apps. This is consistent with research revealing that “skills and drills” learning is best supported by interactive software and is most effective in school settings, where educators and fellow students can scaffold and support active and repetitive practice of skills.5 Although there were suggestions that similar learning could occur in science and even executive functioning, there were not enough studies to confirm this.Perhaps most surprisingly, this review challenges the conventional wisdom that screen apps are helpful in building social communication skills among children with autism spectrum disorder. Although these children became more accomplished with the apps, they had difficulty transferring the skills to the real world. Finally, the authors of this review found mixed results when comparing interactive with receptive learning from screens; in some, repeated tasks improved performance, whereas in others, interactivity may have overwhelmed children’s attentional and working memory resources. Sustained and usable learning from apps may have been best with math and language-acquisition simply because these types of learning, compared with others, can be self-directed and self-paced, practiced over and over again, and objectively measured.Most importantly, this thoughtful review of educational apps reminds us that we do not yet have a gold standard like Sesame Street in the world of educational apps. Moreover, as consumers, we have not yet demanded that these apps be based in or evaluated by rigorous research in which they are tested in the home environment, self-directed and unsupervised by educators, as they are most commonly used. The authors of this excellent review point out the types of apps and the contexts in which they are used that are most effective but, correctly, question the value of many apps as they are currently being used, particularly when one considers the educational value of what they may be displacing, such as free play, creativity, experiencing nature, or interacting with parents, siblings, and friends. It is too easy to believe unsupported claims of educational value and use mobile devices as guilt-free electronic babysitters. As we move into the second half-century of educational screen media, let us seek Sesame Street quality from our interactive apps.

Perceived importance of inclusive street dimensions: a public questionnaire survey from a vision(ing) perspective

The increasingly prevalent concept of inclusiveness in the public discourse is gaining a foothold in the paradigm shift of street design from a predominance of vehicular traffic towards a vision that caters to non-motorised modes and creates an urban setting conducive to non-mobile activities. This study aims to investigate perceived importance within a set of six dimensions of street design (i.e., accessibility, connectivity, streetscape, safety and security, urban vibrancy, and greenery), which is an inclusive street vision and can be contextualised in the act of visioning. A street-intercept questionnaire survey (n = 816) was conducted in Singapore, and gender, age and transport mode use information were also collected. Using a multivariate and graphical approach, a categorical canonical correlation analysis was performed that highlighted the elderly and motorcyclists as groups with potentially different perceptions. Then, univariate ordinal logistic regression models were fitted separately on the six dimensions; gender was non-significant, while age and certain transport modes were significant. In particular, in addition to age, the car passenger transport mode was significant in five dimensions. Recent developments in Singapore’s urban transport, which is undergoing rapid changes due to incremental improvement schemes and disruptive services, such as ride hailing and bicycle sharing, are further discussed. As mobility needs and desirable street qualities vary across transport modes, this study serves as a precursor of further research into specific inclusive street dimensions, such as streetscape and urban vibrancy. The results indicate that land use and transport systems should be planned or redeveloped collaboratively to incorporate users’ aspirations.

The visual quality of streets: A human-centred continuous measurement based on machine learning algorithms and street view images

This study proposes a workable approach for quantitatively measuring the perceptual-based visual quality of streets, which has often relied on subjective impressions or feelings. With the help of recently emerged street view images and machine learning algorithms, an evaluation model has been trained to assess the perceived visual quality with accuracy similar to that of experienced urban designers, to provide full coverage and detailed results for a citywide area. The town centre of Shanghai was selected for the site. Around 140,000 screenshots from Baidu Street View were processed and a machine learning algorithm, SegNet, was applied to intelligently extract the pixels representing key elements affecting the visual quality of streets, including the building frontage, greenery, sky view, pedestrian space, motorisation, and diversity. A Java-based program was then produced to automatically collect the preferences of experienced urban designers on representative sample images. Another machine learning algorithm, i.e. an artificial neural network, was used to train an evaluation model to achieve a citywide, high-resolution evaluation of the visual quality of the streets. Further validation through different approaches shows this evaluation model obtains a satisfactory accuracy. The results from the artificial neural network also help to explore the high or low effects of various key elements on visual quality. In short, this study contributes to the development of human-centred planning and design by providing continuous measurements of an ‘unmeasurable’ quality across large-scale areas. Meanwhile, insights on the perceptual-based visual quality and detailed mapping of various key elements in streets can assist in more efficient street renewal by providing accurate design guidance.

Evaluating Street Quality for Walkability from 3D Models

Street quality is critical to urban sustainability. Well-designed streets encourage walking behaviour and attract public activities, thus advancing the sustainability of a city as a whole. Currently, most quantificational analyses of street quality are based on two dimensional maps, using network algorithms and economic theories to calculate accessibility and land value or to account for a series of elements such as number of trees and number of courtyards in order to audit quality scores. The analysis from three dimensional models and human-centred views is rarely utilized but could offer new possibilities to provide urban planners and designers with analytical feedback on the built environment and design process. This research explores ways to relate physical features with walking behaviour using Reid Ewing’s Urban Design Tool to measure the street quality for walkability. It applies physical metrics from measuring parameters in 3D models based on the human’s perspective and other building metrics from GIS data online to systematically audit street walkability. To validate this method, we take two separate studies. One is a case study to evaluate the street walkability of two districts in NYC from their 3D models and GIS data and to visualize the scores. The result from digital models and real environment are similar which indicates the feasibility of applying this method in urban scale. The other is a pilot study asking a group of students (N = 8) to evaluate street walkability of 3D models, telling them the scores calculated by this method, to explore how the scores influence their evaluations. This study illustrates the possibility to quantify the evaluation of street quality for walkability using Urban Design Tool in 3D models to inform urban designer’s evaluation in street scale during the design process.

Integrated risk assessment of potentially toxic elements and particle pollution in urban road dust of megacity of Pakistan

Potentially toxic elements and particulate matter (PM) in the ecosystem are regarded as extremely hazardous because of their persistence, toxicity and bioaccumulative characteristics. Therefore, present study was conducted to estimate the ecological and human health risks of potentially toxic elements (Cu, Mn, Pb, Cd and Ni) and particle pollution (TSP, PM10 and PM2.5) at 2 and 60 m roadside distance from 15 different sites at dust polluted megacity of Pakistan. The AQI assessments suggested that the majority of sites were found unhealthy for sensitive at 2 and 60 m roadside distance, which reveals that that quality of road pavement and streets are far below than the required standards resulting huge quantity of dust particles suspended in air by natural and anthropogenic activities. The maximum geo-accumulation index (I geo) values (1.47 and 0.52) and pollution index (PI) values (4.18 and 2.15) were observed for Ni at 2 and 60 m distance away from the muddy edge of the roads. Similarly, maximum contamination factor (CF) values (24.5 and 94.5) and ecological risk index (ERI) values (4.11 and 3.15) were found for Cd at 2 and 60 m. The I geo and PI indicated that the road dust at a distance of 2 m was relatively more contaminated as compared to 60 m roadside distance. Highest cancer risk (CR) values (2.33 adult and 10.9 for children) were observed for Pb at 2 m, while highest CR values (1.21 for adult and 5.67 for children) at 60 m distance. No probable health risk was observed as the total hazard index (HIexp) of all potentially toxic elements was <1. However, children were appeared to be more susceptible to potentially toxic elements. Based on the results, we believe that the exponential increase in traffic load and industries have aggravated the pollution level and it is expected to be increased in the future.

A Systematic Measurement of Street Quality through Multi-Sourced Urban Data: A Human-Oriented Analysis.

Many studies have been made on street quality, physical activity and public health. However, most studies so far have focused on only few features, such as street greenery or accessibility. These features fail to capture people’s holistic perceptions. The potential of fine grained, multi-sourced urban data creates new research avenues for addressing multi-feature, intangible, human-oriented issues related to the built environment. This study proposes a systematic, multi-factor quantitative approach for measuring street quality with the support of multi-sourced urban data taking Yangpu District in Shanghai as case study. This holistic approach combines typical and new urban data in order to measure street quality with a human-oriented perspective. This composite measure of street quality is based on the well-established 5Ds dimensions: Density, Diversity, Design, Destination accessibility and Distance to transit. They are combined as a collection of new urban data and research techniques, including location-based service (LBS) positioning data, points of interest (PoIs), elements and visual quality of street-view images extraction with supervised machine learning, and accessibility metrics using network science. According to these quantitative measurements from the five aspects, streets were classified into eight feature clusters and three types reflecting the value of street quality using a hierarchical clustering method. The classification was tested with experts. The analytical framework developed through this study contributes to human-oriented urban planning practices to further encourage physical activity and public health.

What is the value of ‘main street’? Framing and testing the arguments

• This paper defines and then quantitatively analyzes the American main street • The analysis is a quantified assessment of whether assumptions about the value of main street retail can be supported. • The paper presents a literature summary of the causes of main street decline. • A conceptual framework posits three main street qualities: density, diversity and stability. • Using proxy variables for each category, 7,000 blocks in the City of Chicago are analyzed. • The data provides support for the three qualities of main street retail. • The conclusion presents some policy options for sustaining main street retail.

Built Environment Features and Pedestrian Accidents: An Italian Retrospective Study

Daily walking is a recommended physical activity. It can be an all-age suitable, environment-friendly transport option. However, traffic crashes are a widely recognized risk factor, associated with drivers’ errors or a combination of several environmental factors, including physical characteristics of the road space. The aim of this study was to assess the characteristics of built environments on pedestrian safety. Data on road accidents that had occurred between 2005 and 2015, in Alghero, Italy, were retrieved and matched with spatial and functional street qualities. On-street parking was found to increase the risk of pedestrian accidents by about two times, whereas, narrow travel lanes and intersections reduced the incidence of crashes and their public relevance. These field results could inform urban health and spatial planning policies with the final goal of improving health and providing more sustainable models of urban organization.

Urban design quality and walkability: an audit of suburban high streets in an Australian city

ABSTRACT If well planned and designed, suburban high streets can fulfil important economic functions and carry social significance, in addition to allowing for the passage of traffic. However, in newer cities which have been built around the automobile, suburban high streets have struggled to attract and retain customers. This study quantitatively assesses the design quality of suburban high streets in Brisbane, Australia, employing an existing framework. The results suggest that a lack of vitality and walkability in Brisbane’s suburban high streets is due to their low urban design quality.

Quality of Streets – Quality of Urban Life: A Case Study of Tanta City, Egypt

Street plays an important role in the built environment as it is the main spine for activities, movements, and social interactions in every city that affects the people's quality of life (QoL). Recently the quality of urban life (QoUL) becomes a concept that has been discussed in various studies as a response to many problems facing the city streets. However, most streets are designed now for vehicle movements rather than for all users’ needs and values. In this context, the research aims to activate the street's role that achieves the quality of urban life (QoUL) for all users through focusing on the review of the trends and the approaches of urban design and the displays of the quality of urban life definitions and its indicators. To these ends, the research sets a proposed list of urban quality indicators as a guideline framework to assess street performance. Therefore, in the analytical study, the research chooses one street in Egypt then applies the proposed quality indicators framework to assess the street quality. The research concludes the important role of the indicators of the urban quality of life: social, physical, environmental, economic, visual, and management indicators to achieve the street quality.

Toward Urban Spaces of Quality: Through the Existing Urban Legislations in Egypt

Egyptian urban spaces suffer from a chaos that is the result of crowded and disordered pedestrian sidewalks, streets and shop signage. This chaos creates a negative effect on, both, the image of the city and the quality of life within these urban spaces. Many legislations and regulations in Egypt attempted to deal with these issues. Similarly, the Egyptian government established many organizations and authorities in order to deal with these issues with little success. The National Organization of Urban Harmony (NOUH) is one of those organizations established by the government to take the responsibility of dealing with pedestrian sidewalk and shops’ signage while the municipality deals with road occupations. These organizations should perform their responsibilities through the Egyptian legislations. The research at hand aims to find a solution to that particular problem which has influenced the quality of the street and its reflection to the quality of life as result. In order to find a solution, the research attempts to find a mechanism to boost the role of shop signage as an element of urban spaces in order to emphasize street quality. Thus, the research well be divided into four parts: part one reviews the quality of urban spaces and the meaning of its terms while part two reviews the concept of the quality of life and the relation between the quality of life and urban spaces. Part three demonstrates the urban quality of life through tangible and intangible approaches. Finally, part four reviews the Egyptian legislations that deal with research issues and attempts to find the difficulties that faced when enforcing laws. Finally, the research conclusion illustrates the most important issues in the research and their proposed solutions.

Identifying Characters of Good Street for Greater Urban Quality of Life

This conceptual paper aims to demystify how the quality of streets could facilitate the street culture and shaping greater urban qualities. Numerous scholars believed that certain streets had contributed an utmost factor in shaping man's civilisation. The development of modern cities has contributed to a great loss of streets significance as spaces for socialising and dwelling in the local peoples' needs. The outcome of this paper is hoping to guide the practitioners, policy makers and urban designers to incorporate the inclusive street design towards providing a better quality of urban life.

Street rules: does zoning support main street?

This paper investigates the relationship between zoning and “main street.” We define “main street” as a normative ideal: streets composed of blocks that have small, locally owned businesses in walkable contexts. In an urban setting, such main streets would ideally have essential services mixed with amenities, local ownership of businesses, some residences (i.e., apartments over stores), and pedestrian quality. The simultaneous presence of these characteristics has been significantly challenged in recent decades by online shopping, corporate retailing, and auto-oriented urbanism. Little research has sought to understand the role of zoning in this predicament. We use the City of Chicago to analyze how main streets are zoned and whether zoning supports main street qualities. First, we identify the zoning districts and rules that would be best aligned with main street as an ideal. Second, we classify the blocks of Chicago to identify those that might be considered examples of main street. Third, we assess whether these two dimensions—main street-supportive zoning and main street qualities—are, in fact, aligned. Our analysis shows that Chicago’s main street blocks are not zoned in a particularly supportive way. More than two-thirds of the blocks exemplifying main street qualities have zoning designations that potentially compromise their essential characteristics. Specifically, the majority of blocks with main street qualities are zoned for automobile-oriented shopping centers or single-family housing. We argue that zoning should recognize and support main streets in a more specific and concerted way.

Understanding Sense of community in Subiaco, Western Australia A Study of Human Behaviour and Movement Patterns

Despite being an important physical environment capable of promoting social sustainability, sense of community and contributing to a better quality of life, residential streets and neighbourhoods have not attracted significant research interest until now. The integrated physical interconnected network of houses, front yards, walkways, alleyways and streets offers a high potential for community building through social interactions at a neighbourhood level. Understanding people’s movements, activities and perceptions about their streets can inform design practices and local planning policy in creating better communities. This study presents an investigation of a residential neighbourhood in Subiaco, Western Australia through the use of a mixed-method methodology based on observation and a perception survey. A total of 61 households were observed and interviewed during the spring and summer of 2016–2017 to develop useful typological models centred on activities, movements and resident perceptions. The findings endorse the importance of the residential street as a focus place for behaviour setting but argues that in the case of the Subiaco neighbourhood, which is part of a larger car-dependent metropolitain area, movement patterns– including vehicular, cycling, pedestrian modes and jaywalking, have no significant impact on social interactions. According to the perception survey, 82% of the Subiaco neighbourhood residents see activities across the street as generating the highest level of sense of community. The study expands both, the existing theory and approaches to urban planning, by emphasising the need for making neighbourhood streets the centre of liveability through better physical design which encourages and facilitates pedestrian movement.

Relationship of objective street quality attributes with youth physical activity: findings from the Healthy Communities Study.

Residential environments may significantly influence youth physical activity (PA). However, few studies have examined detailed street quality attributes via observational audits in relation to context-specific PA among youth. The objective of this study was to explore whether the overall quality of street environments, as well as specific attributes, was associated with neighbourhood-based and street-based PA within a national sample of youth in the Healthy Communities Study. Data were collected from 4616 youth from 130 communities across the USA. Youth PA in the neighbourhood and on the participant's street was captured using 7-d recall interviews. Windshield survey observational audits documented five street quality variables: burned, boarded up or abandoned residential units, litter, overall condition of residences, street type and presence of sidewalks in good condition. Youth with no litter on their street reported significantly lower neighbourhood-based PA and youth living on a side street, cul-de-sac, dead-end or one-way street reported greater neighbourhood-based PA. No significant associations were detected for the overall street quality index or with street-based PA. Specific street quality attributes may be associated with youth PA. Further research and collaboration between diverse disciplines and agencies should focus on understanding and improving street quality to promote youth PA and health.

Aspectos quantitativos e qualitativos sobre as barreiras para o uso de bicicleta em adultos de Curitiba, Brasil

The implementation of bicycling promotion programs should consider the barriers to this behavior. The aim of this study was to quantitative and qualitatively characterize barriers to leisure and commuting bicycle use for adults from Curitiba, Brazil. The first phase comprised a cross-sectional household survey involving 677 adults (53% women). Of these, 16.7% and 11.2% reported leisure and commuting bicycle use, respectively. Then, 24 bicycle users (50% women) were recruited and participated in focus group interviews. The content of answers was analyzed with a conceptual matrix. The most reported barriers to leisure bicycle use were “bad weather” (65.5%), “heavy traffic” (53.1%), “lack of bike lanes” (48.7%) and “lack of security “(44.2%). In commuting, the most reported were “bad weather” (69.7%), “heavy traffic”, “lack of safety” and “fear of accidents” (51.3% each). The comparative analysis between barriers reported in the survey and those reported in the focus groups showed a combination of seven of the 11 barriers reported in questionnaires. Some of the barriers identified in the survey were not mentioned in the focus groups (“poor street quality”, “pollution”, “not having a bicycle”, “lack of parking”, “distance to destinations”). The main barriers to bicycle use are related to physical environment and safety aspects, regardless of approach adopted and purpose of use.

Quality-of-service: toward a standardized rating tool for pedestrian quality of urban streets

This paper presents research to develop a quality-of service rating system for assessing the pedestrian-oriented characteristics and functions of streets that can be used easily and quickly by practitioners. Most existing methods of assessing pedestrian quality fail to take into account micro-scale landscape and urban design elements that significantly enhance the pedestrian experience, and those few that do are difficult and time-consuming to use. The proposed rating system is (a) context-sensitive, (b) capacity-sensitive, (c) takes into account micro-scale design factors, (d) is feasible to use in a professional planning practice setting, and (e) has built-in flexibility.

CHANGING PROVISION AND USE OF NEIGHBOURHOOD PUBLIC SPACE IN NEPAL’S KATHMANDU VALLEY

Modern cities have witnessed a significant level of transformation of urban environments, in which the urban neighbourhoods of recent origin have also changed. This paper explores the transformation of public space in contemporary urban neighbourhoods of the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal. It examines the changing provision and use of public space through a case study of three recent neighbourhoods using observations and interviews. The study identifies fundamental differences in the development of public space, suggesting that public spaces are no longer the central elements of new neighbourhoods. Further changes with the provision of public space include the existing spatial configuration of open spaces, the loss of social quality of neighbourhood streets and the rise of alternative public venues. The changing provision of public space has influenced the use with the shifting locations of public activities. There is a growing tendency to use the streets as a public space along with other privately owned public spaces. While a large portion of public space remains underutilised or has been put into an inappropriate use, some new uses of public spaces are also noticed in the changing context.

Demystifying the Roles of Streets towards Improving Urban Quality of Life

This conceptual paper aims to demystify how the quality of streets could facilitate the street culture and shaping greater urban qualities. Numerous scholars believed that certain streets had contributed an utmost factor in shaping man's civilisation. The development of modern cities has contributed to a great loss of streets significance as spaces for socialising and dwelling in the local peoples' needs. The outcome of this paper is hoping to guide the practitioners, policy makers and urban designers to incorporate the inclusive street design towards providing a better quality of urban life. Keywords: Urban street; Inclusive street design; City’s livability; Quality of lifeISSN: 2398-4287© 2017. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning &amp; Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.