Potential Functional Opportunities in Urban Streets: An integrational approach to the evaluation and design of urban streets (original) (raw)

There is a positive social consequence to knowing about the relationship between the designed environment of the street boundary and use of the street. Design theories describe successful design characteristics but lack an adequate explanation as to why and how these physical forms enhance use. Theories in the Environment and Behavior field explain the effect on human behavior of generalized notions of the environment but lack comprehensive analysis of the designed physical environment. An integrative theoretical approach is needed in order to explore the relationship between the designed characteristics of the street and use of the street. After reviewing the literature in both urban design and EBS, I noticed that attributes and features identified in design theories and empirical EBS studies as having positive implications for use, do so by increasing people's options or opportunities. The notion of defining the physical environment in terms of the potential opportunities for use it offers, lent itself as a useful integrative concept. My research objectives were therefore to: develop an integrative conceptual model of the relationship between design characteristics of the street and its use based on this notion of functional opportunities; examine the extent to which this concept can integrate knowledge about the relationship between street design and street use, and describe the design characteristics of the street in terms of their implications for use; and explore the extent to which the concept of functional opportunities represents how people perceive and use urban streets. These objectives were addressed following a naturalistic inquiry consisting of two parts; part I, the secondary analysis of existing studies, and part II, the case study. Part I includes: (a) the conceptual model which outlines the processes of production, perception and use of those potential opportunities, by now termed Potential Functional Opportunities (Potential FO), and (b) a secondary analysis of data from selective empirical studies relating street use to designed characteristics of the street boundary. This qualitative analysis of observational, interview and archival data about street design and street use integrated studies from different disciplines, and yielded a description of the urban street in terms of its Potential FO for use. Part II, the case study, used qualitative research methods to explore people's perception of the experiential dimension of the street. At this stage my research questions evolved into: Do people perceive the street in terms of Potential FO for use? and if not, what are the attributes people use to describe the characteristics of the street? How do those attributes identified by the people relate to the attributes I elicited from the literature in Part I? The significance of the proposed research project can be summarized in the following four points. 1) The research will present a way to describe the physical environment which is behaviorally meaningful while maintaining a physical rigor, thus providing a common language for researchers and designers to communicate. 2) The research would enhance the understanding of the consequences of design decisions at the different scales as they relate to use. 3) The integration of current knowledge in terms of Potential FO safeguards against the neglect of street functions, street characteristics, and user groups overlooked in the literature and therefore serves to better direct future design. 4) The use of graphic and verbal analysis of a variety of data avoids the risk of losing the connection between abstract attributes and their physical interpretations; it demonstrates a new application of qualitative research. Finally, this work contributes, as a first step, to theory and methodology of studying the physical environment.