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The Pace of Life - Reanalysed: Why Does Walking Speed of Pedestrians Correlate With City Size?

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  • Independent Researcher

Abstract

In a much quoted study, BORNSTEIN & BORNSTEIN (1976) showed that the walking speed of pedestrians is positively correlated with the size of the city. They interpreted the higher walking speed of people in larger cities as a psychological response to stimulatory overload. We also found a positive correlation between walking speed and city size. In addition, we showed that - at least in our sample - larger cities had higher proportions of young males and lower proportions of people older than 60 years. Walking speed and momentary density did not correlate positively. Because walking speed is age- and sex-dependent (Fig. 2), differences in population structure are likely to cause differences in average walking speed. The average walking speed predicted for each city according to its age- and sex-composition correlated positively with city size. The regressions of observed walking speed on population size and of walking speed predicted from age structure on population size did no differ significantly in their slopes (p > 0.95). It therefore seems unnecessary to invoke other factors in addition to age composition to explain differences in average walking speeds of pedestrians.
... Starting from gender differences, almost all studies find that males generally walk faster than females under all circumstances and street environments: signalized or nonsignalized crosswalks [38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49], walkways [23,35,[50][51][52][53][54][55][56], sidewalks [25,57,58], and inside public facilities [10,34,[59][60][61]. This difference in speed is attributed to gait characteristics, which lead to bigger stride for men [60], the fearless behavior of men [62], the security distance that appears to be higher for women [34], or the fact that women tend to chat more on the mobile phone or when walking in a group which distracts their movement [9]. ...
... Walking elements and their design have impact on speed including street sections, crosswalks, pavements, etc. [44,51,58,62]; crosswalk length and front distance length [27,67,77]; crossing markings [45,78]; street width [42]; and on street motor vehicle parking [22]. Walking speed is positively correlated with city size according to [15,55]. Moreover, the land use in terms of walkability plays an important role in walking speed [12,26,43,57,58]. ...
... Carrying a Baggage Cell Phone Use [34] Turkey Sidewalk − − [36] Uganda Walkway − − [36] USA Walkway − + [37] Turkey Unsignalized Crosswalk − − [38] Jordan Signalized Crosswalk − [41] USA Unsignalized Crosswalk − − [48] New Zealand Walkway + [54] Bangladesh Sidewalk − [55] India ...
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... In [9,10] it is shown, that even the economic and social status of an individual has an influence on his walking speed. In addition, it turns out that high population and the strong economic development of a country also has a positive correlation with the mean walking speed of the population [11][12][13]. Aside from the individual characteristics just mentioned, environmental factors can also influence the gait. ...
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... The ArcGIS Pro 3.0 software takes a value of 5 km/h as a default value. Many studies have been dedicated to measuring this indicator and numerous differences have been proven, especially in European, Asian, and American cities [57,58]. The value chosen in this study is precisely the one that is the default for ArcGIS Pro because it matches the results for cities of similar morphology from Europe. ...
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... It combines a social force model, governing random walk movement of the pedestrian agents and their interaction, alongside the navigation agents of the navigation map that contains information for the pedestrian agents to find their way in the walkable zones within the study area (Jiang et al., 2020;Li et al., 2019). When there is no floodwater, the walking speed of the pedestrian agents is set to 1.4 m/s to represent the average human walking speed (Mohler, Thompson, Creem-Regehr, Pick, & Warren, 2007;Wirtz & Ries, 1992). Nonetheless, the existing behavioural rules in both the social force model and the navigation map allow the pedestrian agents to locally increase or decrease their walking speed (e.g., when they need to abruptly change direction to avoid collisions with each other or with existing obstacles located in the study area). ...
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Chapter
This handbook is the first to comprehensively study the interdependent fields of environmental and conservation psychology. In doing so, it seeks to map the rapidly growing field of conservation psychology and its relationship to environmental psychology. The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology includes basic research on environmental perceptions, attitudes, and values; research on specific environments, such as therapeutic settings, schools, and prisons; environmental impacts on human well-being; and ways to promote a more sustainable relationship between people and the natural environment. This handbook presents an extensive review of current research and is a thorough guide to the state of knowledge about a wide range of topics at the intersection of psychology and the physical environment. Beyond this, it provides a better understanding of the relationship between environmental and conservation psychology, and some sense of the directions in which these interdependent areas of study are heading.
Thesis
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EN (PL below): The aim of this thesis was to investigate the correlation between the detailed pedestrian path configuration, land use characteristics and the pedestrian movement patterns in the historically and spatially diverse urban grid of Bydgoskie Przedmieście and Bielany in Toruń. Open-source geospatial processing software QGIS was used to model the detailed pedestrian network covering both formal and informal paths and to analyse the spatial and functional characteristics of all network elements. The attributes independent from network configuration were measured as the sum of topological and functional weights given to the elements within a direct buffer of each network segment. The configurational characteristics in which the real length of pedestrian routes was considered, were analysed using sDNA – a spatial network analysis plugin developed at Cardiff University. The weighted network analysis was conducted using topological weights, such as segment length and a new weight proposed by the author referring to the length of perceived space boundary. Additionally, functional weights derived from buildings were used – total floor area and retail area. Several routing methods were tested and a hybrid between Euclidean and angular routing was selected as the best match for modelling the measured pedestrian traffic, defined by sDNA creators as ‘pedestrian’ routing. This research proves the lack of statistically significant relation between the pedestrian traffic and spatial and land use characteristics measured as the crow flies and a strong correlation between the pedestrian counts and path betweenness centrality – a measure of strategic positioning of each network segment depending on the number of geodesic paths that pass through the segment. It was revealed that the value best fit for sole modelling pedestrian movement patterns is betweenness centrality weighted using the proposed space boundary length. It was concluded that the betweenness value can be interpreted as pedestrian potential of movement on a given segment in a pedestrian network and that the hybrid between Euclidean and angular routing matches the common tendency of pedestrians to select routes that are not only the shortest, but also the most simple in terms of angular changes. A metric based on network configuration and land use characteristic was recommended to use for accessibility assessment, enabling a quantitative analysis of selected spatial and functional characteristics within a considered walking distance of each network segment. As a practical example of methodology application, the author proposed several changes to the pedestrian network of Bydgoskie Przedmieście and Bielany and analysed their impact on pedestrian movement patterns and accessibility. It was recommended that the presented tools were used in spatial planning units as evidence-based support for planning decisions regarding new walkways, optimal location selection for links between interrupted axes or to evaluate the impact of new investments on spatial accessibility and pedestrian movement patterns. The presented tools can also serve as support in area regeneration programs, enabling conscious rechannelling of main footfalls, which can also prove beneficial to investors and business-owners interested in increasing the number of customers. PL: W niniejszej pracy magisterskiej podjęto tematykę zależności pomiędzy przestrzennym rozkładem ruchu pieszych a strukturą przestrzenno-funkcjonalną sieci dróg pieszych na różnorodnym pod względem układu urbanistycznego obszarze Bydgoskiego Przedmieścia i Bielan w Toruniu. Za pomocą programu QGIS służącego do przetwarzania danych geograficznych, wymodelowano sieć dróg pieszych formalnych i nieformalnych oraz zbadano cechy przestrzenno-funkcjonalne wszystkich elementów sieci. Właściwości niezależne od konfiguracji sieci dróg mierzono jako sumę wybranych wartości topologicznych i funkcjonalnych przypisanych elementom znajdującym się w badanej prostoliniowej odległości od każdego punktu tego odcinka. Cechy zależne od konfiguracji, czyli te uwzględniające rzeczywistą długość trasy pieszej, zostały obliczone za pomocą opracowanego przez Cardiff University narzędzia sDNA służącego do przestrzennej analizy sieci. Do badania struktury przestrzenno-funkcjonalnej jako wagi wykorzystano dane topologiczne takie jak długość elementów sieci oraz zaproponowana przez autorkę długość granicy przestrzeni, a także wagi funkcjonalne jak powierzchnie całkowite budynków oraz powierzchnie handlowo-usługowe. Przetestowano różne metody wyznaczania najkorzystniejszych tras i wybrano mającą najlepsze dopasowanie z pomiarami metodę trasowania hybrydowego, zawierającą w sobie elementy trasowania metrycznego oraz kierunkowego., a przez twórców sDNA nazwana trasowaniem pieszym. Wykazano brak statystycznie istotnej zależności pomiędzy ruchem pieszym a zbadanymi cechami niesieciowymi oraz silną relację pomiędzy zmierzonymi natężeniami ruchu pieszego a obliczoną miarą pośrednictwa dróg pieszych, będącego miarą położenia odcinka względem najkorzystniejszych tras pomiędzy wszystkimi innymi odcinkami dróg w sieci przestrzennej. Najlepsze dopasowanie modelu opisującego natężenie ruchu pieszego otrzymano dla hybrydowego pośrednictwa ważonego długością granicy przestrzeni. Zauważono, że miara pośrednictwa może być interpretowana jako potencjał ruchu pieszego na danym odcinku sieci dróg pieszych, a pośrednictwo hybrydowe uwzględnia powszechne dążenie pieszych do wybierania tras nie tylko metrycznie najkrótszych, ale też najprostszych w rozumieniu zmian kierunku. Zaproponowano miarę określającą dostępność przestrzenną bazującą na strukturze przestrzenno-funkcjonalnej, pozwalającej na analizę ilościową wybranych cech przestrzennych lub funkcjonalnych znajdujących się w wybranej rzeczywistej odległości od każdego z odcinków badanej sieci. Pokazano przykład stosowania opisanej metodologii do analizy oddziaływania zaproponowanych zmian w układzie dróg pieszych Bydgoskiego Przedmieścia i Bielan na przestrzenny rozkład ruchu pieszego oraz dostępność przestrzenną. Opisywane narzędzie zaleca się stosować w jednostkach samorządowych w celu naukowego wsparcia decyzji o wyznaczaniu nowych ciągów pieszych, wybierania optymalnych lokalizacji dla łączników ciągów przerwanych, a także oceny wpływu planowanych inwestycji na dostępność przestrzenną i zmian w przestrzennym rozkładzie ruchu pieszego. Przedstawiony typ analizy może też być pomocny w programach rewitalizacji umożliwiając świadome zmienianie potencjału ruchu pieszego, co może być również korzystne dla inwestorów i przedsiębiorców zainteresowanych zwiększaniem liczby potencjalnych klientów.
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