Vikas Mehta, “Walkable Streets: Pedestrian Behavior, Perceptions and Attitudes”

Yes, another paper about walkability: I’m learning about this topic, but slowly. Mehta begins by noting that walking “is largely influenced by cultural factors, by individual circumstances, preferences and characteristics, and by environmental factors” (217). He suggests that “urban designers are concerned with the environmental qualities that make for better places to walk—not only as a physical activity, but also for the sensorial and experiential pleasure that may be derived from such environments,” and for this reason, “the aspects of the environment that impact the sensory and social qualities of the setting are particularly significant to the field of urban design” (217). “In addressing the microscale urban design qualities of the environment,” Mehta states, “this paper is concerned with the perception and effects of safety, comfort, and pleasurability on walking behavior on Main Streets” (217). I’m glad that his focus will be on urban spaces rather than parks or walking trails; although I do walk in parks, my research is more interested in the walkability of streets, since that’s where most artistic walking practices in the UK seem to take place, although the term “Main Street” may refer solely to commercial or retail streets, which might be a limitation to this study. Mehta discusses two other important factors related to walkability in the paper: “usefulness—the ability of the environment to serve basic needs and create place-attachment; and the sense of belonging created by the presence of community places” (217). 

Mehta points out that most studies of walkability “aim to determine environmental correlates of walking, considering aspects such as the compactness of development patterns, residential and employment density, access to and diversity of land-use mix, and design features such as shade, scenery, aesthetic characteristics of the local environment, local shopping, distance to retail and the presence of attractive stores and houses” (218). Other studies look at “the transportation infrastructure, access to transit, the accessibility of facilities, access to recreational facilities, intersection density, the presence of sidewalks, recreation space in the neighborhood, street patter and connectivity, and the neighborhood type” (218). Safety, aesthetics, and other neighbourhood characteristics are also studied in relation to walkability (218). Mehta states that this paper “provides a new conceptual framework built on empirical research from this study and existing theoretical models” (218). 

Designing for walkability, Mehta suggests, involves thinking of places as providing “sensory stimulation” while supporting “the desired behaviors of its users” (218). He argues that a broadened view of the environment, one that includes physical, social, psychological, and cultural factors that help to determine behaviour, is necessary. Mehta cites Alfonzo’s research, which argues for “a transdisciplinary theoretical model to explain how individual, group, environmental, regional, and other factors affect walking” (218-19). Alfonzo’s work (and once again, I find myself hating the way APA format omits the first names of authors) proposes a model of walking that consists of a hierarchy of five levels of needs in the decision-making process of walking: “feasibility, accessibility, safety, comfort, and pleasurability” (219). Michael Southworth, whose work I’ve also discussed here, proposes six criteria of walkability: “connectivity, linkage with other modes, fine-grained land-use patterns, safety, path quality, and path context” (219). Three of Southworth’s criteria—connectivity, linkage with other modes, and fine-grained land-use patterns—“seem more appropriate for capturing environmental features related to walking because they distinguish between path network at a neighborhood scale, the transportation at the city scale, and the grain of the land-use at the neighborhood scale,” and his notions of path quality and path context “cover similar grounds as comfort and pleasurability in Alfonzo’s” (219). “Both models discuss the importance of an individual’s ability to get to a destination, their perceived safety, the variety of the land uses, and the comfort and sensory pleasure offered by the walking environment,” but neither considers “the importance and relevance of usefulness of the land uses and activities on the path or destination of the walking environment” or “the significance of destinations that are perceived as places for social gathering on walking behavior” (219). For that reason, Mehta wants to consider “the significance of the usefulness of the environment and of places of social meaning on walking behavior” (219). For that reason, this paper “tries to capture the microscale-level physical, land use, and social characteristics that influence walking” in order to answer one question: “What are the microscale environmental characteristics and criteria that influence walking behavior on Main Street?” (219).

For Mehta, the street’s characteristics consist of physical factors (including things like wide sidewalks, trees, canopies, interesting and engaging storefronts, signage, street furniture, and what buildings look like), land-use factors (the variety and range of businesses and the uniqueness of the goods and services they sell), and social factors (community-gathering places, the presence of people and activities, and safety) (219). These factors influence the perceptions of the street’s users, along with cultural factors and the user’s individual associations and background (219). Together, the user’s perceptions and the characteristics of the street “affect the overall perceived quality of the street,” which Mehta sees as having seven separate categories: “feasibility, accessibility, usefulness, safety, comfort, sensory pleasure, and sense of belonging” (220). 

Next, Mehta discusses the literature on walkability using his own categories. He notes that Alfonzo sees feasibility and accessibility as “the first-order needs of walking” (220). A walker must have the time and ability to make a journey on foot: that’s the meaning of feasibility (220). Accessibility, on the other hand, “includes the ability of a person to be able to access the destination; the distances to a destination; the physical and perceived barriers to walking to a place; and the connectivity between land uses” (220). Southworth’s criteria of connectivity and linkage with other modes (220). Mehta assumes that the “first-order needs of feasibility and accessibility have already been met for the person making the walking trip to Main Street”—so that pedestrian has the time and ability to walk, the distance to the destination is short, and there are no physical or other barriers to that destination—so they aren’t considered as part of this study.

Mehta sees usefulness as “the ability for the environment to satisfy the individual’s basic day-to-day needs for shopping, eating, entertainment, and so on” (220). This is similar to Southworth’s notion of fine-grained land-use patterns (220). Mehta notes that people are more likely to walk to places where there are places to eat and shop, but the quality of the goods and services on offer also makes the environment useful and desirable for walking (220). Usefulness makes the environment meaningful to the individual (220). Usefulness can encourage frequency of use, which “translates into a familiarity with the environment and becomes a routine that creates a sense of place and place-attachment for the users of the environment” (220). He suggests that space-time routines that generate familiarity were at the heart of Jane Jacobs’s observations on Greenwich Village in New York (220). For that reason, “usefulness of the street results in possibly satisfying higher-order needs that encourage walking to the Main Street” (220).

Safety—both real and perceived—affects and is affected by the use of the environment (221). Environmental characteristics—the physical condition and maintenance of the environment, its configuration of streets and spaces, the types of land uses, the changes that have been made to the environment, the presence or absence of people (and the kind of people there)—all affect perceptions of safety (221). Safety from traffic is also important: reducing street widths and speed limits, introducing traffic calming measures, barriers between pedestrians and the street (parked cars, trees, plantings) all increase real and perceived safety (221).

Comfort, both environmental and physical, “may be affected by myriad factors including weather, physical conditions, perceived levels of safety, familiarity of the setting and people, convenience, and so on,” Mehta writes (221). In this study, though, Mehta limits comfort “to the physical and environmental [e]ffects of the environment to provide the ability for a person to conduct the tasks of walking on Main Street” (221). The street environment design needs to be “anthropometrically and ergonomically sensitive”; wide sidewalks, trees, shade, shelter, a path free of obstacles, and traffic calming all contribute to comfort (221).

Sensory pleasure “depends on various stimuli perceived from the environment—from the lights, sounds, smells, touches, colors, shapes, patterns, textures, and so on, of the fixed, semi-fixed, and movable elements that make up the street” (222). A moderate level of complexity helps to create sensory pleasure, as do variety, novelty, order, and coherence (222). All aspects of the environment—the windows and canopies and awnings of buildings, for instance, the street and the sidewalk, the people and their movements—help generate sensory pleasure (222). Mehta states that “people prefer public open spaces that provide a moderate level of culturally acceptable sensory stimuli resulting in a complexity that heightens interest without becoming over-stimulated and chaotic” (222). What does “culturally acceptable” mean in this context, though? That’s a very loaded term.

A sense of belonging to community places is another factor that, Mehta argues, is ignored by existing theoretical models of walkability (222). “Sociologists have long emphasized the significance of the symbolic dimension of shared experiences of people in a neighborhood,” he writes (222). Places can help to generate that symbolic dimension: long-standing small local businesses, for instance, or informal community-gathering places, can create a sense of belonging and attachment (222). 

Mehta concludes that this literature review indicates “that the characteristics of land use and the physical and social environment are all important to provide a useful, safe, comfortable, pleasurable, and meaningful setting for people to walk in urban public spaces” (222). This study builds on that research, he continues, by examining “the associations between the characteristics of the environment on the neighborhood Main Street and walking behavior—not only as a physical activity, but also for the overall experience it offers to the pedestrian” (222). In addition, Mehta embraces a subjective measurement on the effect of environmental characteristics on human activity, because those subjective perceptions “may be as important as the objectively measured environmental characteristics” (222). 

Next, Mehta describes his methodology: the study looks at three streets in two cities and one town in the Boston area (223). These are all places with older buildings (built more than 40 years ago) which are built to the sidewalk without setbacks and that are up to four stories in height (224). The streets have seen public improvements to become more pedestrian friendly, including widening sidewalks, curbside parking, tree planting, and the installation of street furniture (benches, bicycle racks, garbage cans, street lighting) (224). All three streets are served by public transit and have a combination of independently owned businesses and national chains (224). In addition, all three streets have “a myriad of uses,” from various kinds of housing, stores offering different goods and services, and public institutions (224). They are all set in primarily residential neighbourhoods and are near university campuses (224). “In addition, the people of the Boston metropolitan area consider these destinations for shopping, dining, and entertainment,” Mehta writes (225).

For the study, 19 blocks in those three areas were selected “to achieve a range in the microscale-level physical, land-use and social characteristics,” which translated in practice into “selecting blocks with a range in the physical size and type of businesses on a block; a range in the variety of businesses on a block; a range in the presence or absence of community-place on a block; a range in the presence or absence of street furniture on a block; and a range in the degree of interesting and engaging storefronts, signage and displays on the block” (225). The neighbourhood-scale characteristics—“the housing and commercial density of the area, the type of people living in the area, the proximity to major natural features such as a water’s edge, and major uses such as a university or a cultural institution, or a transit hub”—remained “common” (225). I’m not entirely sure if that means common to the selected blocks in a given area, or common between the three areas, but I think it means the former, because Mehta tells us that “the selected blocks in each of the three study areas were part of the same urban context with similar neighborhood-scale characteristics of the environment” which “allowed for minimum variation in the macro-scale factors among the selected blocks in a study area” (225-26).

Mehta counted “all pedestrians crossing a randomly selected imaginary line in both directions at various locations on each block for 10 or 15 minutes” more than once and averaged the results (226). In all, he observed the blocks for 71 hours and counted 33,932 pedestrians between April and October 2005. In addition, both a face-to-face survey and interviews were conducted (227). In the survey, “users were asked to rate their familiarity with the block; their perceived daytime and nighttime safety on the block; their perceived pedestrian-friendliness of the block; their perceived range of goods and services on the block; and so on” (227). The interview asked different questions, such as “What has changed in the area/neighborhood in the last few months or years?” and “Do you use this block more often compared to other blocks on this street?” (227). Those surveys and interviews were conducted on four blocks that were considered “most representative of each study area,” so “each participant responded to four standard questionnaires that included a survey and open-ended interview questions” (227-28). I have no idea whether this methodology makes sense for social scientists, but the paper passed its peer review, which must mean something.

The results of this activity indicated that more pedestrians walked on blocks that were close to transit stops, but “transit stops were not the only factor determining the volume of pedestrian flow”: instead, the “perception of usefulness, safety, comfort, sensory pleasure and sense of belonging contributed to the number of persons walking on a block” (228). Those aspects of the blocks were determined through the interviews (228). 

Mehta goes over those interview results in detail, but because I wanted to get to his discussion of those results, so I skipped ahead. “The findings reveal a hierarchy of needs at the microscale that support walking behavior,” Mehta writes, noting that “people perceived differences in physical, land-use, and social characteristics across blocks on the same Main Street, and this affected their walking behavior” (240). In addition, 

people preferred blocks that had a variety in the mix of uses and stores, particularly those that served daily needs; blocks that had gathering places where they could meet their friends and also be able to see other people and activities; blocks that had a distinctive character or ambiance; blocks that were pedestrian-friendly and visually interesting; blocks that had stores and businesses with good service; and blocks that had a stores that were perceived as destinations. (240)

Thus, all five of Mehta’s aspects—“usefulness, safety, comfort, pleasurability, and sense of belonging”—were important to the users of these streets (240). “However,” he continues, “people suggested that usefulness, sense of belonging and pleasurability (in that order) were most important to them in the hierarchy of walking needs” (240). Safety and comfort may have been less important, because all three streets had been upgraded recently to make them comfortable and pedestrian-friendly (240). 

However, those aspects are not the only reason people might decide to walk: “The cultural acceptance of that behavior”—in this case, walking—“is essential for it to occur as a common activity” (240). Mehta assumes that walking on Main Street is culturally acceptable in all three areas, but while “walking behavior took place on the blocks that offered limited usefulness, comfort, sources of sensory pleasure and places to commune,” that behavior was “a necessary activity” rather than “an optional or social activity” (240). “This assumption is consistent with Alfonzo’s model,” Mehta continues—and Alfonzo’s article is waiting for me to read—but Mehta suggests that both usefulness and a sense of belonging ought to be incorporated in that hierarchy of needs (240). 

In his conclusion, Mehta addresses policy and design issues suggested by his findings. For instance, he suggests that “Main Streets will be more walkable if they are planned and designed to have businesses that are useful to the people who use these streets; if they are managed to support community-gathering places; and if they integrate places of social meaning” (242). But can planning and design really “attract and encourage a variety of businesses” and “recognize, support and preserve any community-gathering places that act as destinations and provide a sense of belonging for users of the main streets” (242)? Aren’t those features of urban streets formed by organic processes? Perhaps zoning and bylaws might play a role, but how much of walkable spaces is the result of history and luck? How much can be mandated by city governments or their planning departments? 

Mehta’s article is interesting, if only because his research sites are so different from the city where I live, which might suggest its lack of walkability. Certainly most of the blocks where I find myself walking here offer limited usefulness, comfort, sources of sensory pleasure or places where community members might gather. Instead, most of this city is designed around the car—and the areas of the older city that might provide the density necessary to support the urban fabric Mehta examines here lack usefulness and comfort. My big question—whether this city’s reliance on the private automobile and its lack of walkability present obstacles to the existence of a culture of walking—remains unanswered. I’m also still wondering whether a culture of walking is necessary to support or feed the kinds of participatory or convivial art walking practices that seem to be so central in the UK. That’s my biggest question, and I may have to make up my own answer.

At some point, of course, I’m going to have to stop gathering string on this topic, but perhaps I should continue reading through the articles I’ve gathered and also look at the work of Jane Jacobs and Henri Lefebvre, as a Facebook friend has suggested. All I can do is pursue this tangent until I either find answers to my questions or realize that I’m going to have to provide my own answers. How frightening—it’s always more comfortable to footnote something in an academic paper, because someone else’s idea always feels more valid than one’s own—but then again, how liberating.

Work Cited

Mehta, Vikas. “Walkable Streets: Pedestrian Behavior, Perceptions and Attitudes.” Journal of Urbanism, vol. 1, no. 3, 2008, pp. 217-45. DOI: 10.1080/17549170802529480. 

Southworth, Michael. “Designing the Walkable City.” Journal of Urban Planning and Development, vol. 131, no. 4, 2005, pp. 246-57. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9488(2005)131:4(246).