The city of Vancouver, British Columbia, is building new high-density residential neighbourhoods around its downtown. Working within the context of large-scale corporate development projects, public sector planners are proactively shaping development to be dense but also conform to notions of livability that derive from traditional urbanism, such as ‘eyes on the street’ and pedestrian scale. Design guidelines have resulted in new building types that integrate ground-floor townhouses into very large buildings. This study analysed how the new embedded townhouse forms are contributing to life on the street and neighbourhood livability, using environmental measurements, behaviour observations and surveys. The findings conclude that the embedded townhouses do contribute to livability, although other aspects of the building types and neighbourhoods may pose concerns.

This paper presents research to develop a quality-of service rating system for assessing the pedestrian-oriented characteristics and functions of streets that can be used easily and quickly by practitioners. Most existing methods of assessing pedestrian quality fail to take into account micro-scale landscape and urban design elements that significantly enhance the pedestrian experience, and those few that do are difficult and time-consuming to use. The proposed rating system is (a) context-sensitive, (b) capacity-sensitive, (c) takes into account micro-scale design factors, (d) is feasible to use in a professional planning practice setting, and (e) has built-in flexibility.

Previous crime prediction research focusing on regional characteristics is lacking in terms of the examination of physical characteristics of individual crime scenes. This study, therefore, presents a street crime prediction model by analysing streetscape features within an actual field of vision for a low-rise housing area in South Korea, which serves as a gauge for potential offenders to carry out crime. First, we performed logistic regression to analyse the correlation between street crime opportunities and the elements of streets to derive an equation for predicting street crime using selected variables. Next, we created a crime prediction map based on a geographic information system that contains attribute data on these physical characteristics and presented a street crime prediction model based on the derived prediction equation. Finally, to test the prediction model, we compared actual crime data from the selected area with the results obtained from the prediction model. The test results showed that the prediction model classified 11 out of 29 actual crime spots as crime occurrence; among the 312 non-crime spots, 257 were classified as non-crime occurrence. Based on these test results, we confirm that the occurrence of street crime is affected by the physical characteristics within the actual field of vision and discuss the improvement of the prediction model.

This literature review identifies, analyses, and discusses research methods and findings regarding environmental correlates of active transportation to school (ATS) in the Western world. It reviews 41 research articles studying 5-to-18-year-old school trip choices published since 2010 until 2020. The identified publications focus on two topics. First, the urban environment around the schools and the students’ homes, and the route between them. And second, personal and external factors affecting mode choice, that are related to the built environment. Main findings and academic gaps include: (1) a growing interest on the topic outside North America, especially in Europe; (2) a methodological shift on how to measure distances between homes and schools, and buffer areas around them, moving from straight line distances to those measured along the street network; (3) a lack of consensus about buffer sizes and threshold distances, which may depend on cultural factors; and (4) differences in methodologies: area definition and characteristics and route characteristics. Finally, there is an overview and discussion about the effect of individual and external factors on the use of active modes in children. Parents’ attitudes and perceptions of the built environment were found very relevant, so as their concerns about traffic safety. The influence and extent of school programs to promote ATS or traffic calming solutions require not only the participation of the centre of studies, but also the engagement of the families and the community. The conclusion includes suggestions for future academic research, like the need for interdisciplinary teams and the observation of walkability aspects of infrastructure.

This paper explores whether and to what extent wind discourages sustainable transportation mode choice, which includes riding public transportation, bicycling, and walking. A six month-long field study was carried out at four locations in San Francisco, a city that has been promoting sustainable transportation mode choice but that experiences high wind levels. It involved surveying pedestrians and on-site recording of microclimate data using various instruments. The survey adopted a mixed-method approach to collect both quantitative and qualitative data. Statistical analyses using Kruskal Wallis tests and ordinal logistic regression models identified the significant effect of wind speed on San Francisco’s residents in estimating their discouragement for waiting at transit stop without shelter, bicycling, and walking. Qualitative data revealed a deeper understanding of how wind influences their sustainable transportation mode choice. This research argues for the need to adopt climate-based efforts in urban planning and policy and sheds light on the climate resilience of cities

A framework for sustainable urban design that lays out the elements of sustainable form implementable at different urban scales and highlights relationships across the scales is indeed a helpful gu...