Walking In Streets Research Articles

Attract or repel: how street features shape pedestrians’ leisure walks in cities

ABSTRACT The paper presents a field study analysing how pedestrians walked for leisure purposes in a familiar urban area, and why they walked as they did. Using mobile-based GPS, the walking trajectories of 44 participants were recorded, followed by the administration of a post-walk survey. Results show that participants gravitated towards five distinct paths that were similar in length (three shorter and two longer paths), yet observably different with respect to specific street features. Correspondingly, participants rated street features associated with these differences as factors that either attracted them towards, or repelled them away, from walking in specific streets.

Key environmental factors affecting perceptions of security of night-time walking in neighbourhood streets: A discussion based on fear heat maps

BackgroundWalking plays an important role in residents’ health. After experiencing rapid development, most cities in China have gradually entered the process of urban renewal. Therefore, improving the quality of neighbourhood streets in the old city has become an important issue. The sense of security at night has become an important part of street reconstruction. Therefore, finding out the key environmental factors that affect the security of night-time walking in the streets of the old city has become an important prerequisite for street reconstruction. MethodsFirstly, according to the theoretical explanation of security in the existing literature, the environmental variables that may affect the security of night-time walking are determined. Besides, we chose the typical neighbourhood streets in the old town that need to be improved urgently, and recruited 32 subjects in an on-site experiment to record. Through wearable devices, the galvanic skin response, (GPS), and panoramic video signals generated by the subject during the experiment. The high arousal environment nodes of the subjects were determined by Galvanic skin response GSR signal and GPS signal. According to the semi-structured interview of the subjects, we valenced these high-arousal environment nodes and established a map of each subject’s fear emotional environment nodes. Aggregated into a street walking fear map by kernel density estimation. Finally, we selected the environment nodes with different degrees of fear on the map, established the optimal regression model of night-time walking security through the optimal subset regression method, and finally identified the critical environmental factors. Results and conclusionThe key environmental influences are street transparency, illegal parking level, environmental cleanliness level, light-transmittance intensity form building, CCTV density, and crowd activity intensity. The above key factors suggest that theEyes on the Street (EoS) theory seems to occupy a more important position in the relevant theories of street night-time security research. It also suggests that the privacy of subjects needs to be considered when improving the security of the street at night.

An Investigation into the Causes of Pedestrians' Walking Difficulties in Cairo Streets

This paper intends to focus on Cairo streets from the pedestrian-use perspective. It aims to explore and examine the factors that make Cairo streets better places for walking. Moreover, it intends to contribute to the limited qualitative research on walkable streets and pedestrians' walking experience, specifically in Cairo. In addition, it provides a conceptual framework for understanding the walkability of streets and the experience of pedestrians, built on both empirical field study and prevailing theoretical models reviewed in the literature. To closely examine the factors that determine Cairo streets to be walkable and therefore pedestrian-friendly, the research investigates the status of two streets in Cairo as a case study. The case studies section investigated the street characteristics and the local pedestrians' needs and perceptions towards their walking experience in the streets. This study investigated the status of Cairo streets by recording the users' perceptions of different types to understand the causes of this problem. Moreover, to encourage the walking in Cairo streets and promote social activities, the study investigates two major streets in Cairo,

Critical factors influencing the comfort evaluation for recreational walking in urban street environments

Walking has been actively advocated as a simple and effective means to boost individuals' physical activity levels. Comfort, as one of walking needs, is also the major objectives for many street design guidelines and walking audit tools. However, a few studies only identified the major environmental factors in a piecemeal manner without providing an integrated view on pedestrian comfort for recreational walking. This study aimed to identify the major micro- and built environmental factors and reveal their relative importance. 420 questionnaire responses with concurrently monitored micro-environmental conditions were analyzed to formulate a path model that portrayed the interrelationships between pedestrian comfort, and perceptual and objectively measured street built and micro-environmental characteristics. Our results showed that pedestrian comfort could be directly evaluated by pedestrians' satisfaction of built environment, thermal sensation, perceived air quality and loudness. The influence of satisfaction of built environment alone was found to be comparable to the aggregate influences of thermal sensation, perceived air quality and loudness. Thermal sensation, perceived air quality and loudness were found to mediate the associations between objectively measured parameters and individual recreational walking comfort respectively. The findings provide valuable insights for urban planners to improve the comfort level of recreational walking in streets.

Self Defence Torch Light using Arduino

: It’s observed that most of the crimes against women takes place during night-time. Only safety measure available for women during emergency is pepper spray which is often unconventional thus we came up with a solution for it. With the help of our high intensity torch light, women can flash it into the eyes of the person whom they suspect and since our pupil contract when exposed to bright light it causes loss of sight for a few seconds then that women could electrocute that person with the electrodes attached to it. This is an alternative to pepper spray since women can’t keep pepper spray in hand all the time while walking in streets or roads but can have a torch light with them and the suspect will misjudge it with an ordinary torch light. With the help of Arduino and SIM808 GSM/GPS the position of women is sent as message to their guardians. Apart from it the flashing of light is controlled by Arduino. This is only a safety measure and can help girls from being harassed but apart from it initiative must be taken from every Indian to make India a better place to live for every women

A transmedia storytelling system to transform recorded film memories into visual history

The younger generations are very focused on what surrounds them and on what happens to their friends, but they are hardly interested in written-based historical contents. This creates a loss of cultural heritage passed down for generations. In the attempt of preserving memories and of intercepting the attention of the new generations, in this paper we propose a transmedia storytelling system that uses private film memories and modern communication technologies to tell the story of our past. In particular, the system allows people to explore the city through the eyes of amateur film sequences while walking in city streets: we use an archive of more than 500h of movies shot by private citizens from 1940 to 1989 and we develop a mobile application that links film memories to city places. Through an experimental assessment, we observed that the system engaged different audiences and increased the users’ interest about history; in particular, young people, who said to be not interested in history, admitted that the system increased their interest about historical contents. In general, the obtained results showed that a transmedia storytelling system might help fostering historical consciousness, as it is able to intercept the attention of younger generations.

Walking in streets with minimal sensing

We consider the problem of walking a robot in an unknown polygon called "street", starting from a point $$s$$s to reach a target $$t$$t. The robot is assumed to have minimal sensing capability in a way that cannot infer any geometric properties of the environment, such as its coordinates, angles or distances; but it is equipped with a sensor that can only detect the discontinuities in the depth information (or gaps). Our robot can also locate the target point $$t$$t as soon as it enters in robot's visibility region. In addition, one pebble is assumed to be available to the robot to be used as an identifiable point and to mark any position of the street. Our goal is to generate a shortest possible path for such robot from $$s$$s to $$t$$t in such a scene. We offer a data structure similar to Gap Navigation Tree to maintain the essential sensed data of the explored street. We present an online strategy that guides our robot to navigate the scene and reach the target. The strategy is based only on what is sensed at each point, and on what is saved in the data structure. Although the robot has a limited capability, we show that the robot's detour from the shortest path can be restricted such that our generated path is at most 11 times as long as the shortest path to the target. We also consider a special case of the problem in which the street is rectilinear and the search path has to be rectilinear. We propose a search strategy for this case that generates an $$L_1$$L1-shortest path from $$s$$s to $$t$$t.

Reciprocal attention of dogs and owners in urban contexts

Laboratory-based studies have shown that paying attention to humans is an important determinant of dogs' behavior. However, there are no data on how gaze is deployed between dogs and owners in non-laboratory conditions. This study aimed at characterizing dogs' and owners' attention to each other in 2 urban contexts, characterized by a different density of dynamic stimuli. Short videos of 176 dog–owner couples walking in streets and squares of the city center (CC) or green areas (GAs) of the center of Padova (Italy) were recorded. Continuous sampling was used for recording when dogs and owners were visually oriented toward their respective partners. These data allowed calculation of the average length of continuous gazes, number of gazes per minute, and the percentage of time in which dogs and owners were oriented toward their partners; also computed were the frequency and duration of mutual gazes. Eighty-three dogs and 32 owners never looked at their reciprocal partners for the entire duration of the video. On average, dogs were oriented to owners for 0.6% of the time and looked at them 0.5 times per minute, in bouts of 0.5 seconds. All parameters of dogs' attention were higher for off-leash dogs in GAs than for on-leash dogs in both GAs and CC. Although such limited attention to owners may reflect the requirements of ongoing action, it also suggests that most dogs do not need to look at their owners during walks, possibly because they are not confronted with situations of uncertainty. Owners were oriented to their dogs for 5.3% of the time and looked at them 1.7 times per minute, in bouts of 1.4 seconds. Owners' attention was lower in CC than in GAs, which may reflect differences between contexts in the number of distracting stimuli or in owners' motivations for looking at their dogs while walking in these different contexts.

Weather and Helping: Additional Evidence of the Effect of the Sunshine Samaritan

ABSTRACT Pleasant weather conditions (i.e., sunshine) favor positive social relationships and improve mood. However, the effect of sunshine on spontaneous helping still remains in question. In a field experiment, male and female confederates accidentally dropped a glove on the ground while walking in pedestrian streets. The confederate continued walking, apparently unaware of his/her loss. The experiment was conducted on predominantly cloudy or predominantly sunny days, but precaution was taken to control for the temperature and not to solicit participants when it rained. Passers-by helped the confederates more favorably on the sunnier days. Positive mood induced by sun may explain such results.

Eye on the Street

Some of the most powerful historical images of streets and the people traversing them have been served up by photographers. Public urban spaces are not merely subject matter for photography, however, since photographers themselves are actively engaged in navigating city streets fraught with politics and social meaning. This essay reflects on a few of these urban practices and spaces of photography and identifies some enduring themes through this history, from the technical challenges of depicting humans passing through static structures and built environments of the city to conflicts over access and surveillance. An exploration of the many different appropriations of public spaces for photography shows that walking in city streets has not only been a central subject for fine art photography; it also has been one of its primary historical conditions.

The Sweet Color of an Implicit Request: Women's Hair Color and Spontaneous Helping Behavior

Results of previous researchers' studies on the effect of blond hair color on helping behavior have been inconsistent. In addition, spontaneous helping behavior has not been examined. In this study, female confederates wearing blond, brown, or dark wigs accidentally dropped a glove while walking in pedestrian streets and then walked away, apparently not aware of their loss. It was found that male and not female pedestrians helped the confederates wearing blond wigs more often. An explanation for these results is that a greater degree of youth and good health is associated with women who have blond hair.

Danza e immagine. La dimensione performativa in Bambino manifesto di Virgilio Sieni

This paper deals with the project Bambino Manifesto, concerning Virgilio Sieni’s creation and exhibition of 5 manifestos based on photographs of a group of children depicting gestures from Masaccio and Masolino’s Storie di San Pietro, frescoed at the Cappella Brancacci in Florence. The pictures are explained both as deriving from a balance between form and dynamics, that is put in motion by a detailed work on the dancing body, and as events in themselves being ‘enacted’ by the spectators encountering them, whether casually or purposefully, while walking in the city streets. In fact, the process anticipating and following the elaboration of the pictures comes to affect and determine the photographs performative and aesthetic value. Movement analysis, historical contextualization, as well as the ideas of punctum (Barthes), of building duration (DidiHuberman) and of the theatricality of photographs (Maria Ines Aliverti) serve as a methodological interdisciplinary basis for this study, which shows the intertextual nature of such artistic objects and the semantic and symbolic network they activate in their observers’ eyes.

THE CLASSIC: The Principle of Early Active Movement in Treating Fractures of the Upper Extremity

THE CLASSIC: The Principle of Early Active Movement in Treating Fractures of the Upper Extremity

An Optimal Competitive Strategy for Walking in Streets

A simple polygon P with two distinguished vertices, s and t, is called a street if the two boundary chains from s to t are mutually weakly visible. We present an on-line strategy that walks from s to t, in any unknown street, on a path at most $\sqrt{2}$ times longer than the shortest path. This matches the best lower bound previously known and settles an open problem in the area of competitive path planning. (The result was simultaneously and independently obtained by the first three authors and by the last two authors. Both papers, [C. Icking, R. Klein, and E. Langetepe, Proceedings of the 16th Symposium on Theoretical Aspects in Computer Science, Lecture Notes in Comput. Sci. 1563, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1999, pp. 110--120] and [S. Schuierer and I. Semrau, Proceedings of the 16th Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science, pp. 121--131], were presented at STACS'99. The present paper contains a joint full version.)

Barra Da Tijuca: The Car-Oriented Place — An Ergonomic Approach to Pedestrians Difficulties

The rising of the automobile helped the development of the cities, bringing important changes for the behavior of its habitants. However, the urban designers sometimes underestimated people needs when walking in the streets. The objective of this paper is to provide an ergonomic approach about the difficulties of Americas Avenue faced by pedestrians. This avenue is an important highway of Barra da Tijuca borough, located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and it is one of the most dangerous ways of the city, because of its high index of run over reports. This research is based on assistematics observations and questionnaire form application, that helps us to reflect about the behavior of people before the barriers imposed by built environment. The results showed that the pedestrians, even if aware of deadly risks, prefer to disrespect the safe rules of the transit in attempting to reach the destiny in less time. It is possible to verify how that area is oriented, almost exclusively, for cars and how the urban space can induce the actions of the user.

Walking in the Streets

Walking in the Streets