Urban Streetscapes Research Articles

Level of Pedestrian Stress in Urban Streetscapes

Several service and performance indicators (SPIs) have recently been developed to evaluate pedestrian infrastructures, such as different walkability indexes and pedestrian level of service (P-LOS). Given that stress has become a popular SPI for bicyclists (level of traffic stress [LTS]), this study addressed stress for pedestrians as an SPI by relating measurable attributes of different urban street segment environments with pedestrian perceived stress. A stress-based pedestrian SPI was proposed to classify street segments into four levels of pedestrian stress. A total of 1,043 pedestrians across 30 segments in Bogotá were surveyed about their perceived stress. Multimodal traffic counts, location audits, and layout dimensions were collected in each segment to estimate an ordered probit model that explained four stress categories. Physical infrastructure attributes and traffic operational conditions were found to affect perceived stress at given locations. The similarities between the proposed stress index with the LTS and P-LOS are discussed, and the proposed SPI is applied to pedestrian infrastructure planning and design in light of sustainable transportation goals.

Human perception evaluation system for urban streetscapes based on computer vision algorithms with attention mechanisms

AbstractVirtual 3D modeling is widely implemented in urban planning and design. To evaluate urban planning modeling, based on existing computer vision models, this article aims to improve performance in the field of human perception analysis for urban street views. In this study, the PSP module extracts detailed features from recognized objects of different sizes, an attention mechanism is applied to solve the problem of large information differences in pictures, and transfer learning technology is used to expand the model to the field of virtual 3D modeling to extract more representative and universal features, similar to how humans perceive street view information. Finally, we obtain a more objective, stable, and accurate neural network model that imitates human perception. This evaluation model converges within the correct interval on the training and validation datasets compared with an evaluation of virtual modeling by a large number of people.

The integration of urban streetscapes provides the possibility to fully quantify the ecological landscape of urban green spaces: A case study of Xi’an city

Urban green space is the critical composition of urban ecosystem, which provides numerous ecosystem services for urban residents, and has great value. The optimization of urban green landscape aesthetics can improve the health level of the city and enhance the enjoyment of the people. In this research, we calculated two kinds of ecological indices based on deep learning semantic recognition and multispectral remote sensing, and proposed a set of integrated multi-dimensional urban green ecological indicators, which can be used to evaluate the value of urban green ecological landscape aesthetics. These two kinds of ecological indices represent the landscape characteristics of urban green space from the perspective of overlooking and the perspective of looking around respectively. And then the regionalization method based on dynamic constraint aggregation cluster and partition (RECDAP) is used to identify the ecological homogeneous area of urban block. The results indicated that first, there are spatial differences in pedestrian perception of urban vegetation, and high-perception areas are mainly distributed in schools, parks and internal roads in large communities. Second, the green cover based on overlooking view is also mainly distributed in schools, parks, large communities and other places. Finally, the integration of indicators proves that human perception of urban green space landscape aesthetics cannot be ignored. The homogeneous areas provide a new reference for urban managers and designers to create and maintain urban green space. The addition of streetscape provides a possibility for a more objective and comprehensive evaluation of the aesthetic value of urban green space landscape, so that people can better understand the dynamic role of green space in the urbanization and human health. Public managers and urban green designers can use the ecological indices system to optimize and maintain urban vegetation by taking ecologically homogeneous areas as units.

A simplified evaluation method of rooftop solar energy potential based on image semantic segmentation of urban streetscapes

The evaluation of rooftop solar energy potential in cities has a fundamental role in the development and utilization of solar energy. The irradiance-based approach of evaluation is a repetitive calculation process combined with the complex geometry of urban forms. This research paper proposes a framework that utilizes urban streetscapes to quickly estimate the urban solar energy potential using a simplified solar energy yield model based on two indicators: sky view factor (SVF) and sun coverage factor (SCF). First, 327 Google Street View images were converted into fisheye images, which were semantically segmented based on the deep-learning Full Convolutional Network (FCN). Then, the SVF and SCF were calculated based on the method of pixel statistics. Finally, a model with the simulated solar energy yield was established. Furthermore, a validation study was conducted using rooftop solar production data, which showed that the maximum estimation error of the proposed model was less than 8% and the average relative error was 6.6%. Generally, the proposed model reduced the required computation time while preserving a satisfactory degree of accuracy.

An Initial Agent-Based Model for E-scooter Accommodation into Existing Urban Streetscapes

New forms of mobility reshape the transportation landscape, changing movement for both their users and others in the environment. The transition period during which novel forms of travel are being explored can be a challenging time while the use of spaces must be renegotiated. E-scooters, which have recently been more widely introduced to the UK, are experiencing such a moment as riders, planners, and other users of the streetscape are determining what role this technology will play in communities. The data gaps surrounding e-scooters can make this an especially difficult question for planners because of the cost of gathering relevant observational data, much of which is held under private company ownership. In light of this, this work presents an agent-based model developed to examine the integration of e-scooters into existing streetscapes. Agent-based models explore phenomena through focusing on individual behaviour and rules which in turn gives rise to emergent large scale patterns. These patterns can be dissected and interrogated with a variety of tools, allowing us to tease out individual as well as group experiences of different scenarios. An agent-based approach allows us to capture the individual behaviours of e-scooter users and those of cyclists, drivers of variously sized vehicles, pedestrians, and others present in the environment. By focusing on the interactions of these various street users, we can explore how different approaches to e-scooter integration may fare relative to varying street configurations. Their decision frameworks are informed by observational studies of e-scooter users in order to augment the available data. We discuss the current state of understanding e-scooter behaviour and the potential modelling applications, present an initial behavioural framework of e-scooter decision making and inter-modal interactions, and highlight some preliminary results examining the differences between e-scooters operating on roads versus shared segregated cycle lanes. The work concludes with a case study comparing two modelled scenarios, one including a segregated cycle lane and one without. Drawing upon metrics such as the route segmentation/ cut-off rate and average travel comfort, we can more precisely explore how new forms of mobility will influence different kinds of street users in order to better understand the trade-offs associated with different paths forward.

Bibliometric Analysis on Street Network components in Influencing Genome of Urban Morphologies

The bibliometric is a type of research method used in library and information science. The objective of the study are to overview the influences of street network elements comprises of street hierarchy , permeability and urban streetscapes in studying genome of urban morphologies. The quantitative analysis and statistic was used to describe a pattern of publication in the given body of literature. The publications from Scopus and Web of Science were compiled and anlyzed further. The finding shows that, the genome of urban morphologies have being influenced by the street network components nalemy street hierarchy, permeability and legibility, streescapes and pedestrian movement. These components were mutually present in the urban morphology genome which have the capability in accelerating the movement of city. Street hierarchy shows that hierarchical street becomes an organism that vital for the city’s development. The transition of hierarchical system of street contribute to the changes or evolution of the city from time to time. Meanwhile, permeability is represent the image of city. The physical and visual of image of a city is important to bring the city into global level. However, inconsistency of implementation of permeability element will provides a negative impact on the place. Urban streetscape is essential to avoid negative impression of the city images where it should provide visual richness to the city. Lastly, the pedestrian accessibility attract the movement of publis space with the integration of street network. In conclusion, the street network components mutually influenced the morphology of the city over time and become a backbone for the city to reflects the urbanization process. However, based on the bibliometric analysis, the study of street netwok morphology is not grasp sufficent attention from the Asian country.

Influence of habitat features of urban streetscapes on richness and abundance of avian species

Abstract In human-dominated landscapes, roads are known to negatively influence birds causing decline in species richness, as well as reduction in the number of avian species. However, linear stretches of green spaces formed by roadside plantations in urban streetscapes can support diverse avian communities. In spite of being an integral habitat feature of urban areas, there is a clear paucity of studies on avian diversity in urban streetscapes. The present study was carried out in Kolkata, where data on avian species richness and abundance was collected from 16 randomly placed belt transects (replicates), each of 500 m length and 20 m width, on different major roads throughout the study area keeping a minimum gap of 200 m between adjacent transects to avoid data overlapping. Each of these transects were traversed on foot twice in a month from January to March 2017 during days with calm weather conditions. We recorded 31 species of birds belonging to 8 orders and 19 families, of which maximum species belonged to the order Passeriformes (13 species). We found that both abundance and species richness of birds in transects with higher number of trees (78±4.1 individuals and 19.55±1.703 species of birds) were significantly higher than transects with fewer trees (53.74±2.5 individuals and 9.5±0.789 species of birds). Amongst various habitat features along these streetscapes, the total number of trees positively influenced both species richness (GLMM: F1, 90=14.485, P<0.05) and abundance of birds (GLMM: F1, 90=8.081, P<0.05). However, the other land use variables (i.e. number of bushes, waterbodies, markets and buildings) neither influenced the abundance of birds nor the species richness. Our findings can be useful for urban development to perceive the importance of various habitat features in urban streetscapes in sustaining avian diversity.

Measuring the visual pedestrian qualities of urban streets through crowdsourcing

We experience our neighborhoods and cities through our streets. An essential question is what street features contribute to a superior pedestrian experience? Further, can interacting with urban streetscapes improve cognitive functioning, as interacting with nature does? To answer these questions, large urban street perception databases are enormously helpful. Toward this end, we propose a crowdsourcing method for measuring the pedestrian qualities of streets – preference, imageability, complexity, enclosure, human scale, transparency, and order, all of which are important design dimensions for pedestrian experience. We obtained 556 street images from Google Street View by sampling two sidewalk images from 278 geo-coordinates in Chicago. For each dimension, over 58 (SD=2.5) Amazon Mechanical Turk workers (469 in total) completed an image rating task for the 556 images. In each trial, participants were shown 12 images in a 4x3 grid and asked to choose four images that they evaluate highly on that dimension. The probability of selecting each image for a given dimension across participants was used to quantify how much that image represented that dimension. To test the inter-rater reliability, we randomly split participants into two groups 2000 times and calculated rank-correlations between the measures from each group. We found that the split-half correlations were high for walkability (0.86±0.01; M±SD), preference (0.83±0.02), imageability (0.78±0.02), complexity (0.79±0.02), enclosure (0.80±0.02), and transparency (0.88±0.01) and modest for human scale (0.45±0.05) and order (0.57±0.05). To test whether the measures are internally consistent, we randomly split two images from the same geo-coordinate into two bins (of 278 images) 2000 times, calculated rank-correlations, and found modest to low correlation values, range: [0.06, 0.37]. These results suggest that our method can be used to efficiently measure pedestrian street qualities from non-experts, but with some limitations, to build a large database for studying street features affecting urban street pedestrian experiences.

A Few Steps Away yet Worlds Apart: A Closer Look at Changing Streetscapes in Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, continues to change at a rapid pace in response to city branding efforts. Significant investments in the city’s urban infrastructure and its built environment are widespread, as Abu Dhabi attempts to compete on the world stage and lure in tourists, corporations, and investors alike. City planners have been busy updating the city’s urban spaces and streetscapes. They have been transforming it into a sleek and modern contemporary Arab city with a ‘high-end’ feel – which has been successful thus far. As a result, Abu Dhabi’s name has become synonymous with luxury, and the city’s overall quality, livability, and resilience have improved significantly. At the other end of the spectrum, the lower-income segments of the society appear to be missing from the urban planning effort. Some of the urban upgrading interventions might be unintentionally taking away some of the vibrant and diverse aspects of informal street life. This is especially true in some areas, where monotonous and sterile newer environments and streetscapes are replacing the older, informal environments, mostly inhabited by lower-income workers. This paper takes a closer look at some of these older spaces and streetscapes in Abu Dhabi. Through a case study, it attempts to shed some light on some of these vibrant areas, which could potentially vanish soon. It also attempts to highlight the energetic nature of these streetscapes and bring this to the attention of city planners. The paper argues that valuable lessons could be learned from these informal spaces and that these lessons could contribute positively to future planning efforts in the city.

The influence of green streets on cycling behavior in European cities

Cycling is an environment-friendly and healthy urban transport mode. Making cycling convenient, attractive and safe is thus an essential contribution to livable cities. While previous studies largely focused on the built cycling infrastructure, relationships between greening in streetscapes and cycling behavior are unclear. We conducted an online survey to test how different greening levels in urban streetscapes (i) relate to the attractiveness of streets for cycling, (ii) influence the choice of cycling routes, and (iii) whether respondents’ (n = 1404) attitudes relate to their sociocultural background. We used standardized photo collages showing street scenes with three levels of greening: none, moderate (street trees), high (street trees, vegetated tree pits, green façades). Each green level was combined with different types of cycling infrastructure to untangle greening effects from the latter. Respondents consistently preferred high level of greening over moderate, and the latter over no greening—independent of the type of cycling infrastructure. Most respondents indicated a preference for green streets for cycling and favored detours to avoid grey streets. Whereas respondents’ sociocultural background, affiliation to urban greening and mobility patterns had little influence on the valuation of the street scenes, these variables related to route choice (e.g., gender, employment status, use of greenspaces). Results indicate broad support for greening streetscapes as a promising pathway to enhance cycling in cities. This demonstrates links between urban green planning and environment-friendly mobility policies, and encourages approaches towards green streets as multifunctional components of the urban green infrastructure.

Use of Aerial LiDAR in Measuring Streetscape and Street Trees

This paper investigates the usefulness of 3D volumetric pixels (voxels) and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Quality Level 2 (QL2) Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data to measure features in streetscapes. As the USGS embarks on a national LiDAR database with the goal of covering the entire United States of America (U.S.) with QL2 data or better, this paper investigates uses of QL2 LiDAR for the 3D measuring of streetscapes. Tree mapping is a common use of QL2 LiDAR data, and street trees are among the most common features within urban streetscapes that transportation and urban designers assess. Traditional remote sensing techniques derive tree polygons from imagery, and traditional uses of LiDAR for tree canopy mapping is based on deriving a 2D canopy polygon with an attribute for elevation height. However, when breaking up streetscapes into 5 Ft elevation zones and calculating street–tree voxels at each elevation zone height, 3D characteristics of street trees become prevalent that completely differ from the common 2D LiDAR-derived street trees. Statistical tests in this paper display how different the 3D characteristics are from the 2D-derived LiDAR polygons, as this paper introduces a new methodology for measuring streetscape features in 3D, particularly street trees.

Sentio ergo sum: House paint as politics of the radically mundane

According to one view, the rise of ocular-centrism in the West has reduced the faculty of vision to the cognitive, eliding the sensory aspect of seeing. But there is an important way in which visual experience feels a particular way and exerts, in a sense, a material force upon us. In other words, there is a particular character to the experience of seeing that can interact with us in an abstract, but extremely significant way. This helps to explain why the coercive cultural phenomenon of policy often targets visual expression or experience. The same would hold true, I argue, for other aspects of the sensorium. As a case study in Savannah, GA, this paper explores municipal and civic responses color in the context of urban streetscapes as sites of negotiating, promoting and reproducing “appropriate” sensibilities. I examine how the policing of something as seemingly mundane as house paint is undergrid by notions of restraint, vulgarity, and conformity and reflect hegemonic paradigms of normative citizenry, political interests, and property value. In examining the exertion of the political through the lens of the sensorial, and vice versa, we can explicate the phenomenological aspect of policy, tracking its operations on both cognitive and somatic registers.

Bringing the city to the country: relationships between streetscape vegetation type and bird assemblages in a major regional centre

Abstract Urbanisation is a leading cause of biodiversity loss and habitat fragmentation internationally, and the conservation of representative native assemblages is a challenge confronting environmental managers in expanding urban landscapes. This study investigates the bird assemblages occurring in a rapidly growing regional centre, Ballarat, southeastern Australia. It aims to examine the relationships between urbanisation and bird communities in a regional city by investigating the differences in bird assemblage composition related to the type of vegetation (native or exotic) in urban streetscapes. Bird surveys were completed across four broad habitat types: remnant vegetation, exotic streetscapes, native streetscapes and newly developed streetscapes. Each habitat type had three 1 ha replicate sites. Results show that remnant vegetation fringing residential areas and native streetscapes supported around 60% more native bird species than exotic and newly developed streetscapes. Avian species composition was significantly different between broad habitat types, with remnant vegetation and native streetscapes maintaining representative native bird assemblages, but exotic streetscapes and newly developed streetscapes were dominated by introduced birds. Our results show that, for representative native bird assemblages to be maintained in urban areas, the maintenance of remnant and native vegetation is essential.

Tree pits to help mitigate runoff in dense urban areas

Tree pits are attractive stormwater control measures (SCMs) for implementation in dense urban areas because of their small footprint, their potentially low cost and the co-benefits they may bring through improved street tree growth. While they provide street trees with passive irrigation, it remains to be determined if tree pits may achieve meaningful reductions in stormwater runoff. We undertook a streetscape experiment to quantify runoff retention of tree pits in a heavy clay soil with low-rates of exfiltration. We calibrated and validated a water balance model using the field experiment data to identify tree pit characteristics driving runoff retention performance. We then applied the model to different implementation scenarios to ascertain how useful these tree pits may be at reducing runoff to return a more natural flow regime in dense urban areas. The main drivers of runoff retention were identified as exfiltration rates from the tree pits and the connected impervious catchment size. Our results show that it is possible, even in dense urban streetscapes with low conductivity (heavy-clay) soils, to achieve a 90% reduction in annual runoff and to reduce days of runoff to just 15 days per year. However, to achieve this, tree pits need to be sized between 2.5% and 8% of the impervious catchment area, depending on pit exfiltration rates. In practice, achieving these tree pit to catchment area ratios for a dense urban streetscape will require consideration in the planning stages of development works and is expected to be most feasible through implementation of tree pits alongside a suite of other complementary SCMs.

Contribution of Building Façades to Attractive Streetscapes: Study of Two Main Streets in Kuala Lumpur City

Building facades contribute to attractive urban streetscapes. In between, physical elements and visual qualities of building faA§ades play the most important role. This study seeks to identify the impact of building facades on creating attractive streetscapes in the city of Kuala Lumpur. In achieving this, a self-administered questionnaire survey was conducted to gather peoples' evaluation of building facades in Kuala Lumpur where combination of modern and traditional architecture creates worth-study urban landscapes. The researcher randomly surveyed 330 respondents, 18 to 50 years old, from the passers-by who just visit the area and those who reside and work there, using the time interval sampling method. The results demonstrate that consistency of colors and details of building facades, simplicity, unity, conformity of store lots in a single building block, large windows, transparency of the function of buildings, and display items of store-fronts determine visual richness of streetscapes in the study areas. The findings contribute to visual identity of cities through creating attractive streetscapes.

Mapping preferences for the number of built elements

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the number of design elements in the context of building facades in urban streetscapes and visual preferences of users to enable a more meaningful citizen participation in the design of local streetscapes.Design/methodology/approachThis paper developed a web application, which manages experiments through programmatically creating scenes and displaying them online to participants using questionnaires. It collects preferences towards the number of design elements in the scenes and determines the statistical relationship between them.FindingsThe results offer an empirical description of a semi-convex relationship between the number of elements and preferences. They confirm that participants from a particular area inter-subjectively agree in their visual judgements towards the number of design elements, and justify the employment of a regression model fitted on the preferences of residents to assess design proposal in their area.Originality/valueThe paper offers an empirical description of the relationships between preferences and a wide range of values of the number of design elements and empirically supports that people from one area inter-subjectively agree in their judgements towards a visual aspect of the building facades. The study introduces a new analytical component, known as the vertex, which could alter future methods on the visual evaluation of the built environment.

Book Review: The Political Life of Urban Streetscapes: Naming, Politics, and Place

Book Review: The Political Life of Urban Streetscapes: Naming, Politics, and Place

Forecasting Scenic Preferences for Urban Streetscape Using Photographic Simulation

The urban streetscape of Raja Laut is supported with multiple socio-cultural, administrative, educational, and economic activities. As such, awareness for a healthier environment can be promoted by encouraging more community involvement, including public participation in the landscape assessment exercise. It is believed that the charm and rich characters of the non-natural landscape components of the urban streetscape of Raja Laut should be protected, due to their scenic resources. Therefore, this paper documents the public's scenic preferences for future urban streetscape with an aim to identify the landscape components that have potential enhancing the scenic resources. Photographic simulation with small size sampling was used to assess the public's preferences. Interestingly, early findings indicate that colourful streetscape provide high scenic value. The insights also suggest that both natural and man-made attributes have equal scenic importance. Finding further explains the significant influence of natural attribute in the design and planning of the urban streetscapes in Kuala Lumpur and thus, should be further investigated.

STREETALK: A NAVIGATION SYSTEM FOR PEDESTRIANS AND CYCLISTS

Different from the conventional efficiency-driven navigation systems, StreeTalk navigation system is developed for pedestrians and cyclists to optimize their travelling safety and comfort. Through the application of technologies including object detection and scene parsing, the characteristics of urban streetscapes can be extracted. By combining deep learning models, machines can imitate human’s perception and evaluate streetscapes automatically, and intuitively show users the street safety and comfort level of different commuting options. Relevant technologies can not only be applied in offering panorama navigation services for pedestrians and cyclists, but also better support urban research, inform decision-making and urban landscape design, and explore more possibilities for future urban life.

Review: RIdIM: Répertoire International d'Iconographie Musicale

RIdIM: Repertoire International d'Iconographie Musicale . Antonio Baldassarre, President; Dorothea Baumann, Chair of the Database Working Group; Alan Green, Editorial Centre Project Director. URL: https://ridim.org and http://db.ridim.org The Repertoire International d'Iconographie Musicale (RIdIM) was founded in 1971 as a musicological network dedicated to researching and cataloging visual sources with musical subject matter. Incorporated as a not-for-profit association in 2011, RIdIM now formally identifies as “Association RIdIM.”1 The mission of Association RIdIM includes the management of a database of images accessible without subscription. In addition to the flagship RIdIM database of images, various RIdIM working groups around the world have databases of local image collections, including RIdIM Arbeitsstelle Deutschland in Germany and Iconografia of the Asociacion Espanola de Documentacion Musical (AEDOM) in Spain.2 Alongside a growing interest in the relationship between music and visual culture within both musicology and art history, RIdIM has recently expanded its mandate from music iconography to the area of music and visual culture more broadly, also including theater and dance.3 The content of the RIdIM database reflects this changing mission, including items relating to performance art and performing spaces, as well as video, painting, printmaking, ceramics, and sculpture. The various images in the database span the period from ancient Greece to the present day (the majority dating from between 1600 and 2000) and are drawn from collections worldwide. They depict composers, performers, patrons, instruments, and notation, and include biblical and mythological scenes, colonial encounters, urban streetscapes, and domestic interiors. Although a wide-ranging collection, the RIdIM database holds surprisingly few records—approximately 2,800 at a recent count with …