Vancouver’s downtown peninsula symbolically describes the sense of place unique to the city as a whole. It is a livable city with a strong connection to its natural surroundings, witnessed in its very active population. This sense of place, however, has far more to do with its relationships to its natural setting, the mountains and ocean, than its urban spaces or architecture. Most of the central public spaces are quite ordinary. Although the temperate climate is ideal for inhabiting streets and squares, the majority of the city’s prominent public spaces exist along the water’s edge. Ultimately locals and visitors gravitate to the periphery and the nearby wilderness, conditioning them to look outward on the natural setting as opposed to reflecting inward on the city. Vancouver’s iconic identity exists primarily on the panoramic level. Great cities throughout the world exist without the splendour of mountains and ocean and Vancouver must stop relying on these to constitute its important public spaces. This thesis makes a proposal for a series of large scale urban interventions on the downtown peninsula that serve to augment Vancouver’s sense of place. The first intervention will replace unnecessary car space with public space, in order to incrementally create, over a number of years, an extensive pedestrian network that links its public spaces. This will incorporate characteristics of successful urban systems found in Barcelona, Bogota, Copenhagen, Curitiba and Portland, treating the street not just as a transportation corridor but also as a public space, and a democratic forum. The second intervention will remove many low to mid-density ‘underperforming’ residential buildings, creating a diagonal pedestrian and transit boulevard that bisects the downtown peninsula, linking major public spaces such as English Bay Beach, Robson Square, and Waterfront Station. Along this diagonal, new high density mixed-use development will offer an increased number of residential, commercial and cultural facilities. The new public spaces and developments created by the proposed diagonal boulevard will provide Vancouver with a civic realm better connected than it has ever been. Vancouver will become a city of great pedestrian public spaces, strongly linked to natural surroundings that serve an active and environmentally conscious population.

This study aimed to examine how the characteristics of the road network and the built environment influence the frequency of pedestrian-vehicle crashes. Pedestrian crashes (2000 – 2007) on major roads in DeKalb County of Georgia were obtained from Georgia Department of Transportation. Hotspot analysis was performed on locations with frequent pedestrian incidents to determine their built environment characteristics. Using Geographic Information Systems, the built environment was characterized using road grade, curvature, population density, the amount stores and restaurants, bars, and public transit stops nearby. A negative binomial regression model was used to examine the influence of the built environment characteristics on pedestrian crashes. The results showed that all the variables except for road grade were positively associated with increased number of pedestrian crashes. Findings provided insights into the influence of built environment characteristics which is important for injury prevention to improve pedestrian safety.

Vancouver’s downtown peninsula symbolically describes the sense of place unique to the city as a whole. It is a livable city with a strong connection to its natural surroundings, witnessed in its very active population. This sense of place, however, has far more to do with its relationships to its natural setting, the mountains and ocean, than its urban spaces or architecture. Most of the central public spaces are quite ordinary. Although the temperate climate is ideal for inhabiting streets and squares, the majority of the city’s prominent public spaces exist along the water’s edge. Ultimately locals and visitors gravitate to the periphery and the nearby wilderness, conditioning them to look outward on the natural setting as opposed to reflecting inward on the city. Vancouver’s iconic identity exists primarily on the panoramic level. Great cities throughout the world exist without the splendour of mountains and ocean and Vancouver must stop relying on these to constitute its important public spaces. This thesis makes a proposal for a series of large scale urban interventions on the downtown peninsula that serve to augment Vancouver’s sense of place. The first intervention will replace unnecessary car space with public space, in order to incrementally create, over a number of years, an extensive pedestrian network that links its public spaces. This will incorporate characteristics of successful urban systems found in Barcelona, Bogota, Copenhagen, Curitiba and Portland, treating the street not just as a transportation corridor but also as a public space, and a democratic forum. The second intervention will remove many low to mid-density ‘underperforming’ residential buildings, creating a diagonal pedestrian and transit boulevard that bisects the downtown peninsula, linking major public spaces such as English Bay Beach, Robson Square, and Waterfront Station. Along this diagonal, new high density mixed-use development will offer an increased number of residential, commercial and cultural facilities. The new public spaces and developments created by the proposed diagonal boulevard will provide Vancouver with a civic realm better connected than it has ever been. Vancouver will become a city of great pedestrian public spaces, strongly linked to natural surroundings that serve an active and environmentally conscious population.

The main purpose of this thesis is to detect pedestrian crossing by static and dynamic image processing. This technique can help the blind and the disabled people to find the pedestrian crossing and walk through it safely. Until now there is no research about detecting pedestrian crossing in Taiwan. Therefore, this article applies the algorithm of Bipolarity feature in an image-based technique. In this thesis, the Bipolarity is regarded as the main feature in detecting pedestrian crossing. At first, it uses the features of pedestrian crossing, the black road surface is painted with constant-width periodic white stripes. After computation, the analysis and comparison in an image of intensity distribution is obtained. And the background will be eliminated. Secondly, Connected Component Labeling is used to extract the most similar region, and the marked region will be detected by the image. Finally, this thesis will detect whether the crossing exist or not in the marked region and measure the length of crossing. In dynamic model, the real-time image processing technique combines with wheelchair robot in order to walk through pedestrian crossing automatically, and image processing technique provides real-time offset and angle of displacement for the wheelchair robot to control and reach the destination. In this thesis, the image processing is in PC-base, and it receives the information by using a digital camera to record the real scene of pedestrian crossing. Keywords:pedestrian crossing , image processing, wheelchair robot

Walking to transit stations is proposed as one of the strategies to increase the use of transit. Urban planners, transportation planners, environmentalists, and health professionals encourage and support environmental interventions that can reduce the use of cars for all kinds of trips and use alternative modes of travel such as walking, biking, and mass-transit. This study investigates the influence of the built-environment on walking to transit stations. Transit-oriented communities at quarter and half-mile distances from the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) station in Dallas, Texas, were analyzed to identify the relation of various constructs of built-environment on walking to the DART stations. Twenty-one pedestrian indices were reviewed to develop a comprehensive list of 73 built-environment variables used to measure the suitability to walk. This study aims to objectively measure built-environment using spatial data. Based on this criterion the total number of variables was narrowed to 32. Walking to transit, calculated as a percentage of transit users who walk to the DART LRT stations, was used as the dependent variable. The number of stations in operation and used for analysis in this study is 20(n). Therefore, bootstrapping was used to perform the statistical analysis for this study. The final pattern of variable grouping for the quarter-mile and the half-mile analysis revealed four principal components: Vehicle-Oriented Design, Density, Diversity, and Walking-Oriented Design. Bootstrap regression revealed that density ( = -0.767) was the only principal component that significantly (p<0.05) explained walking to transit station at quarter-mile distance from the station. At half-mile distance built-environment variables did not report any significant relation to walking to transit. The present study revealed that mere increase of density should not be taken as a proxy of increase in walking. Environmental interventions that can promote walking should be identified even at locations with high density. Further studies should use advanced statistical techniques such as Hierarchical Linear Modeling or Structural Equation Modeling to test the relationship of both the principal components and the individual variables that define the principal component to clearly understand the relationship of built-environment with walking to transit station.

Thesis (M.S.)--Florida State University, 2003. / Advisor: Lisa K. Spainhour, Florida State University, College of Engineering, Dept. of Civil Engineering. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Mar. 5, 2004). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. Arch.)--University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes special report study entitled: Pedestrian network : an adaptive integration of elevated walkway system in Hong Kong. Includes bibliographical references.

Pedestrian and cyclist collisions with motor vehicles are a growing problem in the United States and in particular Austin, Texas. These collisions cause unnecessary loss of life and injury. This research explores strategies in the realms of engineering, education and enforcement from three leading cities for pedestrian and cyclist safety. Based on the analysis, I have identified possible strategies for use in Austin, Texas to prevent these collision types. I also offer a conceptual model that can be used as a framework for organizing and thinking about the various components involved in preventing pedestrian and cyclist collisions with motor vehicles. / text

published_or_final_version / Urban Planning and Design / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Landscape Architecture