Megaron (Nov 2020)
A Conceptual Approach to Determine Optimum Pedestrian Comfort Route to Access Urban Public Spaces
Abstract
Walking has become one of the important transportation modes together with the increasing importance of sustainability in urban life, thereby, necessitating the design of and planning for safe, accessible, and well-connected pedestrian routes in developing cities. Sidewalks, which are urban furniture, provide pedestrian access in urban transportation; however, insufficient sidewalks in terms of physical characteristics including width, slope, aspect, material, lighting, security, etc. prevent the users ofdifferent ages, genders, and abilities, equally enjoying from public spaces. The cultural and climatic characteristics of the pedestrian route (pedestrian route aspect, azimuth angle, the prevailing wind, shading etc.) should also be considered in the design and planning process. Otherwise, pedestrian routes cannot provide comfortable and preferable routes for individuals. This study aims to determine comfortable pedestrian routes in terms of environmental and climatic features. The study method comprises of the following four steps: (1) The criteria used for designing the comfortable pedestrian routes for the individuals with different abilities, ages, and genders were determined by the review of national and international literature published in the last twenty years and emerging fifteen criteria subsumed under five factors (circulation and accessibility, physical characteristics, security, vegetation, and climatic features) were used to evaluate pedestrian route comfort. (2) The pedestrian routes' suitability has been determined through the Geographical Information Systems (GIS) based multi-criteria analysis method (MCA). This method has helped to integrate multiple criteria in the decision making process. In the CBS analysis, the data were standardized, the characteristics of pedestrian routes were determined by survey studies and their suitability was ranked between 0 (least suitable) - 3 (most suitable) according to the determined criteria and the data layers were overlapped before the classification of comfortable pedestrian routes as five conformity groups, including the lowest, low, medium, high, and the highest suitable. (3) Pedestrian routes have been mapped according to their suitability in terms of environmental and climatic characteristics. (4) Plans, policies, and strategies were developed to guide decision-makers to create comfortable routes. The rapidly developing and urbanizing city of Adana, whose streets and avenues are essential for the public, was selected as the study area to determine the existing pedestrian routes suitability. However, this area was limited due to the comprehensive nature of the study method. The routes within 15 minutes walking distance, which equal to 800 meters, of Hayal Park, a well equipped and big size district park located at the point where many neighborhood boundaries intersect, were selected to evaluate routes' suitability. The study results show that there are similar characteristics in all suitability classes. The surface materials are the same as concrete pavements and suitable for night use on all routes; however, the slope varies between 0-6 % to 6-12%, and the aspect ratio negatively affects the pedestrian comfort. The common vegetation types are wide-crowned tree species in the refuges, the combination of bushes and trees in the building garden adjacent to the road, and narrow and wide-crowned trees on the sidewalk. There is no pavement or sidewalk for pedestrians in the lowest conformity class routes and pedestrians use the vehicle road. In the routes where the sidewalk is located, the sidewalks are on one side of the vehicle road or directly adjacent to the building on both sides and are very narrow (1 meter). Urban furniture on the sidewalks is positioned to prevent pedestrian access. The sidewalks adjacent to the building's side and front gardens are 5 meters wide in the low suitable class. These routes are unsuitable for pedestrians because sidewalks are used as car parking areas. In the study area, the sidewalks are generally identified as medium suitability classes. Unlike the low suitability class, there are 1.5-2 m wide sidewalks reserved for pedestrians after the parking areas located in the front garden distances of some buildings, and vegetation is conveniently positioned to provide shade to pedestrians. However, some urban furniture such as lighting elements, waste bins, electrical panels, etc. prevent pedestrian transition. The highest conformity routes are located on the adjacent to main streets where the pedestrian circulation is high due to the commercial use of the building ground floor, large width sidewalks, and conveniently located plant and urban furniture. Based on the results of the study, the following suggestions are offered o increase the conformity of both existed and planned pedestrian routes: (1) The sidewalk width is one of the difficult criteria to change in the developed urban area; therefore, sidewalk width should be designed and planned according to the intensity of future use. (2) Urban furniture should be in an appropriate position and height on both narrow and wide-width pavements. (3) An urban pedestrian access system in which current practices are integrated should be developed to ensure regular maintenance of sidewalks and to eliminate problems in the shortest time possible. Thus, both physically and climatically comfortable pedestrian routes can be created by developing a GIS-based access system by which data flow is provided by public institutions. In this study, the evaluation criteria for designing the comfortable pedestrian routes were determined by the review of national and international literature published in the last 20 years. The methodology of the study is of practical value since it ucan be applied to the identification of pedestrian comfort route in different urban areas. Moreover, this study may serve as a guide for decision-makers in future urban design and planning. with the concrete data obtained by the integration of GIS.
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