Evaluation method of urban designs impact on pedestrian travels

GHIO, MARIE; BLAS, FRÉDÉRIC; TOUZARD, CLARA; MASSIN, THOMAS

Conferencia; International Forum on Urbanism (IFoU) 2020 conference; 2020

Evaluation method of urban design?s impact on pedestrian travels.Although it is essential to understand how people move in cities, very often pedestrians are not taken into account in this assertion. Yet, within the guidelines of sustainable urban mobility, the pedestrian mode plays a key role, as part or totality of any trip, because of its low environmental impact and affordability. Moreover, especially in the cities of emerging countries, it is usually the dominant mode. However, in practice, urban projects tend to focus on massive transport and urban infrastructures, generating urban barriers and penalizing the pedestrian mode.Therefore this article takes part in urban analysis and city design, in particular in urban form-travels interaction. It develops an evaluation method of urban design?s impact on pedestrian travels. Our analysis of Buenos Aires, Argentina, relies on a method for urban barriers? spatial detection and evaluation based on open data exploitation and mapping tools. It enables us to evaluate interaction between urban form and pedestrian mobility through two concepts: the ?urban barrier?, understood as an artificial or natural obstacle that affects a walking path, and the ?deviation?, defined as the barrier?s intensity and quantified by the introduced distance difference. In order to propose solutions to optimize the pedestrians? experience, the article highlights different aspects of urban design such as accessibility, proximity, legibility, imaginability and complexity, the different scales of the urban form (city, district, block) and the challenge of completing urban design data in Latin America?s cities.