Built environment variables influencing pedestrian trips: Guidelines for the design of pedestrian-oriented urban development: Towards a walkable city
Overview
Background & policy context:
Knowledge of how urban planning and design influence pedestrian mobility is crucial to drawing up and improving guidelines for planning and architectural work. These guidelines are the final project goal, as an instrument to substitute conventional methods of urban design by others oriented to facilitating pedestrian trips.
Objectives:
The Project had two main goals:
- To investigate how urban characteristics affect pedestrian mobility;
- To prepare a set of guidelines for a more pedestrian oriented urban design.
The research aimed to analyse the existing knowledge on the topic, completing it by developing several specific investigations on the influence of those urban features whose impacts on pedestrian are still not well known and to check them with respect to the Spanish case. Thirteen specific areas of research are designed, each one with its own goals and methodology.
These thirteen sub-projects were:
- IE-01 - Study of motives of diversion made by pedestrians;
- IE-02 - Perception Study of attractions of walking as a mode of transport;
- IE-03 - Study of densities and pedestrian mobility;
- IE-04 - Study of densities and walking to school;
- IE-05 - Exploratory study of the influence of land-use mix on pedestrian mobility;
- IE-06 - Study of walking trips to work and the degree of land-use mix;
- IE-07 - Study of walking trips from home and the degree of land-use mix;
- IE-08 - Study of pedestrian mobility and parameters of urban layout;
- IE-09 - Study of the influence of pedestrianisation, measures to improve pedestrian and vehicle coexistence, and street design alterations on walking trips;
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E-10 - Study of walking trips and typologies of relations with the street; - IE-11 - Study of walking trips and ground floor land uses;
- IE-12 - Study of the influence of the street characteristics on pedestrian safety (accidents in relation to the widths of road carriageways and footways);
- IE-13 - Study of the effect of main roads on walking trips.
Methodology:
First, the research was divided in the following objectives and phases:
Objective A: Influence of the city-planning variables in pedestrian mobility:
- Phase I: Identify significant the city-planning variables, by means of a literature review;
- Phase II: Study the available information on the influence of each variable and identification of existing knowledge gaps;
- Phase III: Design specific research to fill knowledge gaps in each variable or by groups with variables;
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hase IV: Develop the specific research; - Phase V: Draw up partial and global conclusions on the incidence of the city-planning-architectonic characteristics in pedestrian mobility.
Objective B: Writing recommendations for the city-planning and architectonic practice.
- Phase VI: Revise the existing recommendations;
- Phase VII: Select and group the variables and susceptible practices of generic treatment;
- Phase VIII: Write the recommendations.
Among the 13 studies done, the following are highlighted:
Influence of density and mixture of land-uses on pedestrian mobility. This study is oriented to evaluate the influence of the urban density and the mixture of land-uses in the modal choice for walking trips. The methodology used for this study is a univariant statistic analysis with data coming from the Mobility Survey that was done in Madrid in 2004 (modal distribution, resident density, school job and positions, etc). The sample population used was taken from residents in the Madrid Community (sample: approx. 35000 homes & 95000 questionnaires)
Influence of the urban layout (morphologic configuration in the urban area). This study is aimed to evaluate the influence of the morphologic configuration (configuration accessibility), quantifying with techniques of "Space Syntax", both in the distribution of pedestrian flows and in the modal distribution. The methodology used is the model "Syntax Spa
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