Pedestrian Behavior Pedestrian Behavior and Perception in Urban Walking Environments

Abstract

Planning pedestrian environments requires assumptions about how pedestrians will respond to characteristics of the environment as they formulate and enact their walking itineraries. As a consequence, most research interest in public environments focuses on behavior in relation to those characteristics. For example, there is a substantial body of descriptive and typological studies of pedestrian environments. Metric, geometric, and topological models have proved useful in characterizing density and direction of movement. The need to understand the mechanism of choice has prompted microscale and laboratory-based research on exploratory spatial behavior within walking districts. Studies of behavior in relation to comfort, the way in which images of places impinge on choices, and how dynamic and serial experience of the city affects individual itineraries have all developed as specialized fields of understanding. In general, studies of pedestrian environment dynamics have both diversified and multiplied as its systems and methodologies are adapted for planning other environments.