Thesis (M. Arch.)--University of Detroit Mercy, 2010. / "30 April 2010". Includes bibliographical references (p. 146-147).

Due to the current practices of street design in countries with hot and humid climates that prioritise air-conditioned cars as the favoured mode of transport, the physical and spatial characteristics of the street space have failed to retain much or any user-friendliness for walking or for sustaining street life. Moreover, particularly in Saudi Arabia, the increasingly sedentary lifestyle is leading to significant health problems and prevalence of lifestyle diseases. However, there has been limited research conducted on the use of urban streets under hot and humid conditions, and even less is known about the impact of certain sociocultural aspects in, for example, Muslim countries, on the design of streets for walking. Such a situation poses challenges to the urban space researcher and designer interested in gaining a better understanding of how walking can be restored into the street space. This thesis contributes to the advancement of knowledge in this area by integrating three influential factors connected to walking in a single study; an approach which has not been elaborated previously. This thesis aimed to broaden the understanding of pedestrians’ requirements, attitudes and preferences in order to identify ways in which the neglected street space can be reclaimed for walking under hot-humid climatic conditions and to inform decision-making into improved street design. The scope of this research centred on combining an understanding of pedestrians’ thermal comfort in a hot and humid urban environment, that of the city of Dammam in Saudi Arabia, where the problem is particularly acute, coupled with exploration into the socio-cultural aspects through which behaviour such as undertaking increased physical activity is governed. The research postulated an interactive relationship between the existing conditions of the street space and these two factors. Owing to the multifaceted nature of the factors affecting an individual’s choice to walk, there are few accepted theoretical frameworks, hence studying the cause-and-effect relationship between street design and walking is challenging. Following the literature review and analysis of existing street characteristics; the strategy of mixed-method data collection combining participant observation with interviews and a questionnaire was conducted. The findings revealed the dual impact of key street characteristics on pedestrians’ reluctance to walk on streets and this led to two levels of simultaneous interventions being suggested: physical and spatial. The analytical process (1) identified the upper thermal comfort limit for pedestrians by application of the Physiological Equivalent Temperature index, ‘PET’, through use of the RayMan Software; (2) revealed that physical proximity to other people while on the street is the most sensitive socio-cultural issue in the outdoor spaces of Saudi, particularly between the opposite sexes, and that the existing pavements are generally too narrow to accommodate the preferred personal distance; (3) identified appropriate design interventions at the microscale of the street space to introduce improved shading and create air movement to reduce the impact of solar radiation and humidity and thus to contribute towards encouraging more use of streets for walking; and (4) marking the pavement to indicate distance walked along with high quality streetscape elements was shown to attract pedestrians effectively. Such findings have significant implications for restoring the place of walking on streets in hot and humid cities and the research concludes by emphasising: (1) it is the design of the street space in climatically responsive and socio-culturally compatible ways, rather than the configuration of the urban form that is most associated with increasing physical activity; (2) there is a crucial need to redistribute the street space away from cars and towards pedestrians by widening the existing pavements both for satisfying the average personal comfort distance between pedestrians and for incorporating appropriate streetscape elements.

Urban planning needs to address the future role of transport infrastructure in cities. Due to previous planning ideals, our cities consist of transport networks that stand in conflict with ambitions to create dense and multifunctional urban environments, decrease pollution, and create safe urban space. Here, the urban street is a measure that enables new multifunctional solutions for transport infrastructures. This thesis, therefore, investigates street redevelopment projects in relation to the Swedish planning process, which is assessed through five case studies of street redevelopment projects in Swedish cities. Interviews combined with a desktop study are utilised as methods. The theoretical framework of obduracy and socio-technical transitions is applied to understand the mechanisms behind the hindering- and enabling factors present in the projects.  Our results show that hindering factors exist on the interpersonal scale in the projects between planners and planning departments, internally within the municipalities between planning organisation and politics, and externally between different actor groups such as public and state actors. Hindering factors are also identified in the physical infrastructure and historical context of the streets where older planning ideals still influence the physical and societal preconditions of the street networks. These factors slowed down the planning processes and led to compromises in aim and vision. It is not evident that the formal planning process should change in order to overcome these obstacles. Rather, it is the cooperation and coordination between actors that mainly determines the functionality of the process. Successful strategies in the projects have been; anchoring projects in municipal goals, combining incorporating different urban planning aspects and departments, municipalities as main actors, carefully assessing the location and context and integrating street redevelopment projects with broader development projects.

The methodology to measure the performance of urban streets was significantly revised in the latest edition of the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM 2010). Urban Streets, which include urban and suburban signalized arterial highways, typically serve the four modes of transportation (auto, transit, pedestrian and bicycle) and are frequently congested. Analyzing both recurrent and non-recurrent conditions is essential. In this dissertation, the author addressed several urban streets related issues by developing an alternative method to measure recurrent multimodal conditions on urban streets; gathering feedback relating to the key elements of the developed method; and developing a probabilistic method to analyze and measure non-recurrent conditions. Real life sample applications were performed for both developed methods. The developed multimodal method addresses the following: (1) the use of level of service (LOS) step functions; (2) the comparability of LOS results across modes; (3) the impacts of modes on other modes; (4) the establishment of thresholds; (5) accuracy; and (6) user perceptions in measuring multimodal conditions on urban streets. Feedback gathered from transportation professionals through focus group meetings and surveys supported most of the features of the developed multimodal method and provided default values for method application. They were divided on the naming of condition levels and on the number of condition levels to use. Non-recurrent conditions were addressed through the development of a Markovian probabilistic method to analyze and measure the resilience of congested, signalized, arterial highways, for which availability of existing analytical tools is limited. The method results provide a plexiform of information about the rate and speed of recovery of the arterial traffic flow. / Ph. D.

This study uses complexity theory to examine the space of the street. In a morpho-ecological city, process creates form just as form creates process. The process of movement is a critical form generator within the urban system. In this thesis, the urban system comprising streets/ car/pedestrian is examined. If this collection of urban modes of mobility is a complex system capable of selforganising behaviour, what effect does the ordering imposed by traffic engineering have on this system? I look at the driving body and the walking body as co-creating the city by their movement through urban space. I suggest that, through attention to the fragments of interactions enacted during these movements, we can, through design, allow for the emergence of selforganising behaviour. Urban shared streets, descendants of the ‘woonerf’, appear to function more efficiently than engineered streets, without the usual traffic ordering. The counterintuitive success of these streets implies a self-organising behaviour that is generated by the density of interaction between the inhabitants of the street. These designs potentially work as a change agent, a catalyst, operating within a complex system. This has the potential to move systems from one attractor state to another. A city built with these spaces becomes a city of enfilades; an open system of spaces that are adaptable to uses that fluctuate with time and avoid thickening the palimpsest of traffic engineering. I look at siting shared streets in Wellington, based on jaywalking, a transgressive use of the streetspace that prefigures a shared space, and changes to urban networks associated with such designs. Interaction within the city is a creative force with a structure. City design needs to consider and address this infrastructure and design for it. The infrastructure of interaction has been subsumed by the infrastructure of movement. Shared streets indicate there may not be a need for this – they can be integrated. The process of movement creates instances of interaction; therefore designing spaces of/for movement must be designed to enhance the infrastructure of interaction. The result of such interaction is not just somewhat better; it may be a phase change - catalytically better .