Street Network: Physical and Cultural Transformations on the Morphology of Historical City of Malacca

The deterioration of streets in the historical city of Malacca in Malaysia due to modernization contributes to the streets’ vulnerabilities. This paper purposely analyses the physical transformation of the street networks for the years of 1993-2015, and the cultural influences and impact throughout the establishment of multi-racial cultural society. The methodology for the study is through mapping the street networks of Malacca city by using SPOT satellite imageries of three different years; 1993, 2005, and 2015, and through the street semi-automatic extraction technique to monitor the street pattern of Malacca city. Multiple sensors of SPOT were used, consisting of SPOT-2XS, SPOT 5, and SPOT 6 with 20 m, 5 m, and 1.5 m resolutions in extracting the street objects, while using the IMAGINE OBJECTIVE tools from ERDAS. The finding shows that the street network trend varied from 1993, 2005, and 2015 where the streets achieved 23.8% street expansions in the year 1993 compared to 10.49% in the year 2005. However, the development trend of streets increased to 14.68% in the year 2015. The connection of the physical transformations of the streets with the cultural impact contributed to the sense of place and divided the streets based on socio-economic, cultural and ethnic lines. Finally, it shows that the trend and pattern of street networks were essential in understanding a city’s morphology that has a significant impact on cultural evolution since the establishment of the Chinese community in Malacca.

Connectivity in Superblock Street Networks: Measuring Distance, Directness, and the Diversity of Pedestrian Paths

Superblocks are a common urban development strategy used in cities of the United Arab Emirates and the larger Gulf region. In planning new neighborhoods, these cities utilize superblocks structured using various street network designs. Despite their key role in shaping its main transportation network, the connectivity of these designs has not been frequently studied. This paper addresses this research gap, analyzing ten different superblock designs, and focusing on their internal and external connectivity properties. Internal connectivity is studied by measuring connections between plots in the superblocks. External connectivity is measured from plots to the superblocks’ corners, the points from which to access surrounding areas. Connectivity is measured in terms of distance, directness, and route diversity. The results show that strong similarities exist across the studied designs, particularly in terms of travel distances. Differences are found in terms of efficiency and, most notably, route diversity. Findings are discussed in relation to walkability, the costs associated to each design given network length variations, and the importance of creating rich and diverse street systems that support open-ended exploration. While based on a sample of ideal cases and in need of validation with built cases, this paper outlines a method by which to evaluate and compare superblock network design alternatives.

The structure, centrality, and scale of urban street networks: Cases from Pre-Industrial Afro-Eurasia

Cities and towns have often developed infrastructure that enabled a variety of socio-economic interactions. Street networks within these urban settings provide key access to resources, neighborhoods, and cultural facilities. Studies on settlement scaling have also demonstrated that a variety of urban infrastructure and resources indicate clear population scaling relationships in both modern and ancient settings. This article presents an approach that investigates past street network centrality and its relationship to population scaling in urban contexts. Centrality results are compared statistically among different urban settings, which are categorized as orthogonal (i.e., planned) or self-organizing (i.e., organic) urban settings, with places having both characteristics classified as hybrid. Results demonstrate that street nodes have a power law relationship to urban area, where the number of nodes increases and node density decreases in a sub-linear manner for larger sites. Most median centrality values decrease in a negative sub-linear manner as sites are larger, with organic and hybrid urban sites’ centrality being generally less and diminishing more rapidly than orthogonal settings. Diminishing centrality shows comparability to modern urban systems, where larger urban districts may restrict overall interaction due to increasing transport costs over wider areas. Centrality results indicate that scaling results have multiples of approximately ⅙ or ⅓ that are comparable to other urban and road infrastructure, suggesting a potential relationship between different infrastructure features and population in urban centers. The results have implications for archaeological settlements where urban street plans are incomplete or undetermined, as it allows forecasts to be made on past urban sites’ street network centrality. Additionally, a tool to enable analysis of street networks and centrality is provided as part of the contribution.

The implication of street network design for walkability: A review

A street network-friendly design allows walkability among people and is proven beneficial to the environment, community health, and economy of the city. Walkability in a street network increases potential trips by pedestrians through sidewalks and linked streets to create shorter travel distances. Street designs for pedestrian walkways are commonly ignored, with more focus on vehicular access, consequently leading to a lack of effort in improving the street network designs linked to various destinations. Accordingly, this paper reviews the street network designs affecting walkability from the perspective of the urban community. A systematic literature review method was employed to identify and analyse the articles published in the Sciencedirect.com database between 2004 and 2020 using two keywords: street network design and walkable city. The main finding suggested that street networks were associated with proper street designs. Therefore, a walkable city developed from a thriving street network design improved local physical activities and healthy communities.

What determines a boundary for navigating a complex street network: evidence from London taxi drivers

Spatial boundaries play an important role in defining spaces, structuring memory and supporting planning during navigation. Recent models of hierarchical route planning use boundaries to plan efficiently first across regions and then within regions. However, it remains unclear which structures (e.g. parks, rivers, major streets, etc.) will form salient boundaries in real-world cities. This study tested licensed London taxi drivers, who are unique in their ability to navigate London flexibly without physical navigation aids. They were asked to indicate streets they considered as boundaries for London districts or dividing areas. It was found that agreement on boundary streets varied considerably, from some boundaries providing almost no consensus to some boundaries consistently noted as boundaries. Examining the properties of the streets revealed that a key factor in the consistent boundaries was the near rectilinear nature of the designated region (e.g. Mayfair and Soho) and the distinctiveness of parks (e.g. Regent's Park). Surprisingly, the River Thames was not consistently considered as a boundary. These findings provide insight into types of environmental features that lead to the perception of explicit boundaries in large-scale urban space. Because route planning models assume that boundaries are used to segregate the space for efficient planning, these results help make predictions of the likely planning demands of different routes in such complex large-scale street networks. Such predictions could be used to highlight information used for navigation guidance applications to enable more efficient hierarchical planning and learning of large-scale environments.

Urban Traffic Network Sustainability of One-Way and Two-Way Streets: A Case Study in Downtown Brickfields, Kuala Lumpur

The once-held wisdom of the supreme efficiency of one-way streets has been gradually sup-planted by the perceived sustainability of two-way streets in the design of livable cities that prioritizes the safety of pedestrians and thriving of local businesses. However, it is rarely dis-cussed on whether one-way street conversions have truly improved the long-term traffic effi-ciencies on urban street networks, as conflating socioeconomic factors such as vehicular popula-tion growth and induced travel demand may render empirical analysis inconclusive. In this study, microscopic traffic simulations implemented on SUMO platform was performed to ana-lyze the effect of street conversion in Downtown Brickfields, Kuala Lumpur. This approach can control and standardize travel demand in both one-way and two-way street networks, and would therefore give a fairer evaluation by precluding all socioeconomic factors. It was found that one-way streets do not necessarily improve the traffic efficiency of the network, as it is very dependent on the traffic scenario evolution over time. One-way streets perform better at the on-set of traffic congestion due to its higher capacity, but on average, the 4-fold longer travel times that made it harder to clear traffic by getting vehicles to their destinations compared to two-way streets. As time progresses, congestion in one-way streets may become twice as worse compared to two-way streets. This study may contribute to a more holistic assessment of traffic circulation plan designed for smart and livable cities