Walkability assessment for urban areas around railway stations along the Rhine-Alpine Corridor

Otsuka, Noriko; Wittowsky, Dirk; Damerau, Marlene; Gerten, Christian

doi:10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2021.103081

Cited by 31 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…For instance, Cervero and Kockelman (1997) address density, diversity, and design and Dovey and Pafka (2020) advocate that density, mix, and pedestrian access are key factors for understanding and measuring walkability. More recently, Otsuka et al (2021) developed an adapted version of WalkScore, including traffic noise, pedestrian casualties, road speed limits, and air quality as metrics. However, considering this preliminary study’s focus on observing the usefulness of a grammar-based approach for managing trade-offs at an urban scale, adopting a single metric (pedestrian accessibility) to estimate walkability allowed us to explore a bidimensional trade-off, providing simplicity and accuracy to our analyses.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A grammar-based optimization approach for walkable urban fabrics considering pedestrian accessibility and infrastructure cost

Lima

Brown

Duarte

2022

Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science

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Designing urban areas that provide smaller distances to their amenities is a key factor toward more walkable environments. Moreover, this is a critical aspect of climate-resilient urban planning since it is broadly assumed that areas with greater walkability discourage automobile usage and reduce CO2 emissions. Generative and data-driven design approaches, in turn, increase designers’ ability to explore wider sets of potential solutions. In this sense, identifying designs with an optimized performance out of the vast possibilities that computation can provide is crucial. Shape grammars are a formal method of shape generation that facilitate the elaboration of complex patterns and meaningful designs. This paper hypothesizes that coupling shape grammars with multi-objective optimization can help address trade-offs and decision-making in urban design. It focuses on the pedestrian accessibility and infrastructure cost (as estimated by cumulative street length) trade-off in urban fabrics as a case study to verify the suitability of a grammar-based optimization approach for more dynamic and efficient solution-finding in urban design. Our findings suggest that a grammar-based optimization approach is helpful in addressing urban trade-offs as it could be used to filter the design space and provide optimal alternative fabric layouts with increased pedestrian accessibility and decreased infrastructure cost.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A grammar-based optimization approach for walkable urban fabrics considering pedestrian accessibility and infrastructure cost

Lima

Brown

Duarte

2022

Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science

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“…The street space is the main area for walking activities; it is also where traffic is relatively concentrated and human–vehicle interactions occur. According to existing studies, motor vehicle traffic and noise pollution in street areas are the main factors that influence the quality of the pedestrian environment in a street space, and traffic noise pollution has a significant impact on walking trips (Otsuka et al., 2021; Van Cauwenberg et al., 2012). Road traffic noise affects pedestrians’ hearing, so this article incorporates the road traffic noise level into the Walk Score evaluation system and corrects the Walk Score.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The penalty of the road traffic noise level is recorded as

α_{Noise}

. The correspondence between the classification of road traffic noise and the Walk Score penalty metric is shown in Table 3 (Otsuka et al., 2021). The classification of road traffic noise intensity levels is based on the Technical Specifications for Environmental Noise Monitoring: Routine Monitoring for Urban Environmental Noise (HJ 640–2012) released by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment of the People's Republic of China.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

An improved method for urban Walk Score calculation considering perception of the street environment

Zhang

et al. 2022

Transactions in GIS

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Walk Score is widely used to measure the convenience of surrounding amenities and generally considers the physical characteristics of streets (density of crossings, distances, etc.). This article proposes an improved Walk Score evaluation method considering what pedestrians perceive through hearing and sight in the street environment. By using a traffic noise assessment model and a semantic segmentation model, the improved method incorporates traffic noise and vegetation coverage factors as penalties into the original Walk Score. Based on the proposed method, a case study was conducted in Nanjing, China. Compared with the original Walk Score: (1) the improved Walk Score results present more information about how the street environment affects walkability; (2) areas near downtown generally scored higher, while some traditional downtown areas scored lower, which is mainly because the latter areas have little vegetation along the streets; and (3) areas around urban viaducts and overpasses scored lower due to the additional penalty of traffic noise. With the support of the improved Walk Score evaluation method, urban planning and policymakers can develop more comprehensive solutions to improve urban walkability.

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“…The scope of the station area of the transportation hub is the influence range of a transportation hub on its surrounding space, and determining its boundary is conducive to a better study of the interaction between the hub and the city. Previous studies have mostly determined the station area as a circular buffer with a radius of 500 m [4], 600 m [25], 700 m [47], or 800 m [11] based on the time that passengers are willing to walk to the site. However, some scholars have raised doubts about this [48,49].…”

Section: Determining the Scope Of The Station Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Railway hub station areas are important transition places for transportation hubs and the city. Since the 1970s, the function of railway hubs has gradually expanded from connecting a variety of transportation to urban centers, covering transportation functions, consumption, dwell, and other functions [11]. Currently, railway hub station areas are developing towards becoming multi-functional, high density, urban complex centers [12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the Space Use of Large Railway Hub Station Areas in Beijing toward Integrated Station-City Development

Liang

Song

Dong

2021

Land

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With the large-scale construction of high-speed railways and the continuous increase in population flows, railway hubs are becoming the most dynamic places in cities. As a key node of intercity traffic and an important part of urban development, railway hub stations are the main carriers for the implementation of the Integrated Station-City Development (ISCD) strategy. A comprehensive evaluation of the space use of railway hub station areas can provide a basic understanding of the intensive utilization and optimization of urban space. However, existing relevant studies lack a comprehensive assessment of the compound structures and functions within large railway hub station areas at the microscopic level. Therefore, this paper was guided by integrated station-city development, relying on Geographic Information Science (GIS)technology, and big data such as Points of Interest (POI) and real-time traffic, focusing on walking accessibility, facility convenience, function compound, and land development intensity used around railway hub station areas. The uses of the station areas in four large railway hubs in Beijing were analyzed. Based on this, we built an ISCD index, combined with the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method, and assessed the degree of ISCD in the four railway hubs. The study showed that among the four large railway hubs in Beijing, the Beijing North railway station offers the best walking accessibility. The Beijing railway station features the largest facility convenience, function compound, and land development intensity. In general, the levels of ISCD of the Beijing and Beijing North Railway Stations were significantly higher than those of the Beijing West and Beijing South Railway Stations.

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Walkability assessment for urban areas around railway stations along the Rhine-Alpine Corridor

Cited by 31 publications

References 46 publications

A grammar-based optimization approach for walkable urban fabrics considering pedestrian accessibility and infrastructure cost

A grammar-based optimization approach for walkable urban fabrics considering pedestrian accessibility and infrastructure cost

An improved method for urban Walk Score calculation considering perception of the street environment

Evaluating the Space Use of Large Railway Hub Station Areas in Beijing toward Integrated Station-City Development

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