We shape our buildings, but do they then shape us? A longitudinal analysis of pedestrian flows and development activity in Melbourne
Name
journal.pone.0257534.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
4.04 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
bb50579496cde87577741b401eec26e1
Author(s)
Sevtsuk, Andres
Basu, Rounaq
Chancey, Bahij
Date Issued
August 2021
Journal
PLOS ONE
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Citation
Sevtsuk A, Basu R, Chancey B (2021) We shape our buildings, but do they then shape us? A longitudinal analysis of pedestrian flows and development activity in Melbourne. PLoS ONE 16(9): e0257534
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Cities are increasingly promoting walkability to tackle climate change, improve urban quality of life, and address socioeconomic inequities that auto-oriented development tends to exacerbate, prompting a need for predictive pedestrian flow models. This paper implements a novel network-based pedestrian flow model at a property-level resolution in the City of Melbourne. Data on Melbourne’s urban form, land-uses, amenities, and pedestrian walkways as well as weather conditions are used to predict pedestrian flows between different land-use pairs, which are subsequently calibrated against hourly observed pedestrian counts from automated sensors. Calibration allows the model extrapolate pedestrian flows on all streets throughout the city center based on reliable baseline observations, and to forecast how new development projects will change existing pedestrian flows. Longitudinal data availability also allows us to validate how accurate such predictions are by comparing model results to actual pedestrian counts observed in following years. Updating the built-environment data annually, we (1) test the accuracy of different calibration techniques for predicting foot-traffic on the city’s streets in subsequent years; (2) assess how changes in the built environment affect changes in foot-traffic; (3) analyze which pedestrian origin-destination flows explain observed foot-traffic during three peak weekday periods; and (4) assess the stability of model predictions over time. We find that annual changes in the built environment have a significant and measurable impact on the spatial distribution of Melbourne’s pedestrian flows. We hope this novel framework can be used by planners to implement “pedestrian impact assessments” for newly planned developments, which can complement traditional vehicular “traffic impact assessments”.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257534
