Residential Space Transformation in Support of Waterfront City (Case Study: Arut River, Pangkalan Bun)

The Arut River flows through the city of Pangkalan Bun in Central Kalimantan and is the forerunner of the formation of this city. The structure of the residential space formed by houses on stilts and wooden roads further strengthens the existence of riverside settlements. The settlements on the banks of the Arut River currently function not only as residences but also tourist attractions with the concept of a waterfront city. Waterfront city in Pangkalan Bun City began to be developed in 2018 in Mendawai Village. Tourism activities on the banks of the Arut River have affected the use of residential space, so this study aims to find changes in residential space as a result of the development of tourism activities. The research methodology used is rationalistic qualitative with an empirical and spatial approach. The results showed that public residential spaces such as roads and rivers underwent more changes, on certain days and hours the street space turned into parking, selling areas, and sitting/“hanging out” areas. Private spaces such as houses also turn into stalls/shops and inns.

Multidimensional Urban Vitality on Streets: Spatial Patterns and Influence Factor Identification Using Multisource Urban Data

Urban vitality is a key indicator for measuring urban development. This topic has been trending in urban planning and sustainable development, and significant progress has been made in measuring single indicators of urban vitality based on parcel or block units. With the continuous development of smart sensing technology, multisource urban data are becoming increasingly abundant. The application of such data to measure the multidimensional urban vitality of street space, reflecting multiple functions of an urban space, can significantly improve the accuracy of urban vitality analyses and promote the construction of people-oriented healthy cities. In this study, streets were taken as the analysis unit, and multisource data such as the trajectories of taxies and shared bicycles, user reviews and cultural facility points of interest (POIs) in Chengdu, a city in southwestern China, were used to identify spatial patterns of urban vitality on streets across social, economic and cultural dimensions. The correlation between the built environment factors and the multidimensional urban vitality on the street was analyzed using a multiple regression model. The spatial distribution of the different dimensions of urban vitality of the street space in Chengdu varies to a certain extent. It is common for areas with high social vitality to have production and life centers nearby. High economic vitality centers are typically found along busy streets with a high concentration of businesses. Areas with high cultural vitality centers tend to be concentrated on the city’s central streets. Land use, transportation, external environment, population and employment are all closely linked to urban vitality on streets. The crowd counting and POI density have the greatest impact on multidimensional urban vitality. The crowd and the level of service facilities profoundly affect social interaction, trade activities and cultural communication. The goodness of fit (R2) of the regression models for social, economic and cultural vitality are 0.590, 0.423 and 0.409, respectively. Using multisource urban data, our findings can help stakeholders better understand the spatial patterns and influencing factors of multidimensional urban vitality on streets and provide sustainable urban planning and development strategies for the future.

Spatial-Temporal Flows-Adaptive Street Layout Control Using Reinforcement Learning

Complete streets scheme makes seminal contributions to securing the basic public right-of-way (ROW), improving road safety, and maintaining high traffic efficiency for all modes of commute. However, such a popular street design paradigm also faces endogenous pressures like the appeal to a more balanced ROW for non-vehicular users. In addition, the deployment of Autonomous Vehicle (AV) mobility is likely to challenge the conventional use of the street space as well as this scheme. Previous studies have invented automated control techniques for specific road management issues, such as traffic light control and lane management. Whereas models and algorithms that dynamically calibrate the ROW of road space corresponding to travel demands and place-making requirements still represent a research gap. This study proposes a novel optimal control method that decides the ROW of road space assigned to driveways and sidewalks in real-time. To solve this optimal control task, a reinforcement learning method is introduced that employs a microscopic traffic simulator, namely SUMO, as its environment. The model was trained for 150 episodes using a four-legged intersection and joint AVs-pedestrian travel demands of a day. Results evidenced the effectiveness of the model in both symmetric and asymmetric road settings. After being trained by 150 episodes, our proposed model significantly increased its comprehensive reward of both pedestrians and vehicular traffic efficiency and sidewalk ratio by 10.39%. Decisions on the balanced ROW are optimised as 90.16% of the edges decrease the driveways supply and raise sidewalk shares by approximately 9%. Moreover, during 18.22% of the tested time slots, a lane-width equivalent space is shifted from driveways to sidewalks, minimising the travel costs for both an AV fleet and pedestrians. Our study primarily contributes to the modelling architecture and algorithms concerning centralised and real-time ROW management. Prospective applications out of this method are likely to facilitate AV mobility-oriented road management and pedestrian-friendly street space design in the near future.

Associations between the quality of street space and the attributes of the built environment using large volumes of street view pictures

In this study, we focus on the quality of street space which has attracted high attentions. We discover associations between the quality of street space and built environment attributes through an ordered logistic model using massive street view pictures (SVPs) and data on street location, form, function and attributes. Before ascertain which built environment factors influence the quality of street space, we checked the concordance of the experts’ scores, as well as correlations between different dimensions through Kappa analysis and drew the distribution map of street space quality. We found that the value of intersection over union is 85.61% for scoring the street space quality by different people. The spatial quality of more than 75% streets are in the middle level with no obvious polarisation observed in the central area of Qingdao. In addition, for street quality index, all variables are statistically significant. The sequence is as follows: near-line rate > D/H ratio > slope > length of street > distance to administrative center > POIs diversity. The D/H ratio, near-line rate, slope length of street, distance to administrative center and POIs diversity have various associations on every dimension of street quality. They can prove useful for drafting more appropriate policy measures aimed at improving street quality.

Water as a Social Generator: Activating social and water security in residential Kilbirnie

<p>Residential streets make up a large proportion of accessible public space while failing to facilitate community activity. These streets carry a relatively low volume of traffic, yet are standard in form. This factor in conjunction with the self-contained nature of houses in residential areas results in a lack of social capital in areas with a large amount of social potential. The suburbs of Kilbirnie on the Rongotai isthmus in Wellington have been selected as the site due to the potential of the streets; in particular due to their width and mono-functionality. The five sites that have been selected have potential far beyond their current use and are going to be used as a design case study to explore pre-emptive disaster design in conjunction with providing social amenities. The streetscape within the identified site is excessively wide with a large amount of on-street parking. This thesis argues that this extra, underutilised space has the potential to be adapted into an aesthetically pleasing, functional community amenity. The designs will break up the monotonous nature of the residential streets and create a hub for surrounding residents through the exploration of programme and form. The introduction of water storage infrastructure as a programme will pre-emptively service the suburb in the event of a disaster. The likelihood of the potable water supply being severed to both the Wellington CBD and to the Rongotai Isthmus and Miramar Peninsula is high due to the location of the service pipes in relation to the dominant fault lines in the suburb. The study proposes exploring programmes which challenge people’s perception of ownership of public land and amenity. Re-allocating and prioritising parts of street space to provide amenity for surrounding residents has the potential to initiate a change from monotone, mundane functionality into a hub of social activity, community building and disaster resilience. The design methodology uses precedents which employ techniques that can be used to challenge the norm and provide a design outcome which creates engaging residential spaces.</p>

Water as a Social Generator: Activating social and water security in residential Kilbirnie

<p>Residential streets make up a large proportion of accessible public space while failing to facilitate community activity. These streets carry a relatively low volume of traffic, yet are standard in form. This factor in conjunction with the self-contained nature of houses in residential areas results in a lack of social capital in areas with a large amount of social potential. The suburbs of Kilbirnie on the Rongotai isthmus in Wellington have been selected as the site due to the potential of the streets; in particular due to their width and mono-functionality. The five sites that have been selected have potential far beyond their current use and are going to be used as a design case study to explore pre-emptive disaster design in conjunction with providing social amenities. The streetscape within the identified site is excessively wide with a large amount of on-street parking. This thesis argues that this extra, underutilised space has the potential to be adapted into an aesthetically pleasing, functional community amenity. The designs will break up the monotonous nature of the residential streets and create a hub for surrounding residents through the exploration of programme and form. The introduction of water storage infrastructure as a programme will pre-emptively service the suburb in the event of a disaster. The likelihood of the potable water supply being severed to both the Wellington CBD and to the Rongotai Isthmus and Miramar Peninsula is high due to the location of the service pipes in relation to the dominant fault lines in the suburb. The study proposes exploring programmes which challenge people’s perception of ownership of public land and amenity. Re-allocating and prioritising parts of street space to provide amenity for surrounding residents has the potential to initiate a change from monotone, mundane functionality into a hub of social activity, community building and disaster resilience. The design methodology uses precedents which employ techniques that can be used to challenge the norm and provide a design outcome which creates engaging residential spaces.</p>

Analysis on the Coupling Relationship between Smoke-Free City Community Public Service Function and Street Space

Objectives: In this study, with Gulou District, Xuzhou City, Jiangsu Province in eastern Chinataken as the research object, the coupling coordination model between the two subsystems, namely smoke-free city communitypublic servicefunction and street space vitality, was constructed based on the principle of synergy theory. Next, the measurement system of street space form in the research area was established with the aid of urban basic information data provided by the open data platform and the GIS technology. Furthermore, the related system was evaluated by the entropy method and the spatial syntax, and the results of multi-dimensional systematic evaluation indexes were visualizedby introducing the grid method. Finally, the internal coupling coordination relationship between smoke-free city communitypublicservice function and street space vitality was revealed to assistant smoke-freepublic service space design and optimisation and guide fine smoke-freecity planning practice. The following results were obtained. Population density and spatial integration are important evaluation indexes for measuring the coupling between public service function and street space vitality. Therefore, appropriate residential density and street traffic vitality are the key to promoting the development of community public service space. In view of this, this study can provide a quantitative basis for the construction of smoke-free public environment in healthy cities.

The Influence of Strip-City Street Network Structure on Spatial Vitality: Case Studies in Lanzhou, China

In the context of China’s recent urbanization, the agglomeration and diffusion of the strip-city spatial network are gradually being reconstructed. The ways in which the street network structure affects the underlying logic of economic and social development is worthy of in-depth consideration. This study takes Lanzhou (a typical strip city in China) as a case study, using dynamic, geographic, big data and spatial syntactic-theory models to explore the influence of street network accessibility and structure on the spatial and temporal distribution of strip-city spatial vitality. We use Hotspot Analysis (Getis-Ord Gi*) to analyze the dispersal characteristics of street space vitality. In addition, the spatial and temporal heterogeneity characteristics and mechanism of the influence of street accessibility on spatial vitality are evaluated using the spatial Durbin model (SDM). The results show that: the temporal and spatial performance of urban vitality on weekdays and weekends conforms to people’s daily activities, offering similar spatial agglomeration and dispersion effects; accessibility and pedestrian-friendly streets have better urban spatial vitality clustering; street network integration significantly affects the reshaping of urban vitality, but there is apparent temporal heterogeneity in the degree of impact.

Street Design for Hedonistic Sustainability through AI and Human Co-Operative Evaluation

Recently, there has been an increasing emphasis on community development centered on the well-being and quality of life of citizens, while pursuing sustainability. This study proposes an AI and human co-operative evaluation (AIHCE) framework that facilitates communication design between designers and stakeholders based on human emotions and values and is an evaluation method for street space. AIHCE is an evaluation method based on image recognition technology that performs deep learning of the facial expressions of both people and the city; namely, it consists of a facial expression recognition model (FERM) and a street image evaluation model (SIEM). The former evaluates the street space based on the emotions and values of the pedestrian’s facial expression, and the latter evaluates the target street space from the prepared street space image. AIHCE is an integrated framework for these two models, enabling continuous and objective evaluation of space with simultaneous subjective emotional evaluation, showing the possibility of reflecting it in the design. It is expected to contribute to fostering people’s awareness that streets are public goods reflecting the basic functions of public spaces and the values and regional characteristics of residents, contributing to the improvement of the sustainability of the entire city.