Streetscape Features Related to Pedestrian Activity

Focusing on the street level experience, Ewing et al. (2005, 2006) developed measurement protocols for nine urban design qualities cited in the literature—imageability, enclosure, human scale, transparency, complexity, coherence, linkage, legibility, and tidiness. The first five were successfully operationalized and then related to pedestrian counts on 588 street segments in New York City. Ewing et al. (2013) showed that the one urban design quality--transparency-- is more significant in explaining pedestrian counts than development density, land use diversity, street network design, destination accessibility, distance to transit, or demographics, the so-called D variables. This paper builds on the research of Ewing et al. (2005, 2013) to distinguish which specific streetscape features influence levels of pedestrian activity after controlling for the other D variables: A composite variable comprised of windows overlooking the street, continuous building facades forming a street wall, active street frontage, proportion of historic buildings, number of buildings with identifiers, and number of pieces of street furniture, prove to be highly significant.

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• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ANF10 Pedestrians. Alternate title: Streetscape Features Related to Pedestrian Activities
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Ewing, Reid
  • Hajrasouliha, Amir
  • Neckerman, Kathy
  • Purciel, Marnie
  • Nelson, Arthur C
  • Greene, William H
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC
  • Date: 2014-1-12 to 2014-1-16
• Date: 2014

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: References; Tables;
• Pagination: 20p
• Monograph Title: TRB 93rd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Measures of effectiveness; Pedestrian counts; Streetscape; Urban design; Windows (Buildings)
• Geographic Terms: New York (New York)
• Subject Areas: Design; Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Planning and Forecasting; I20: Design and Planning of Transport Infrastructure;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01516217
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 14-5420
• Files: PRP, TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 28 2014 12:32PM