Practitioners must take visual connectivity seriously

Amir Hajrasouliha & Li Yin, "The impact of street network connectivity on pedestrian volume," Urban Studies 52 (2015): 13

The take-away: This article suggests that visual connectivity—described in terms of how many turns it takes to reach a given number of destinations—must be taken seriously by practitioners who might otherwise rely solely on physical connectivity, which measures travel time. 

Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of street network connectivity on pedestrian volume.  Street network connectivity measured in most current studies captures only the metric characteristics of streets or physical connectivity. A whole different type of connectivity, visual connectivity, is largely ignored. Described in basic terms, higher physical connectivity means shorter travel time to reach the same number of destinations while higher visual connectivity means fewer turns to see the same number of destinations. Despite the correlation of these two connectivity constructs, studying both physical and visual  connectivity is essential to better understand the role of street network on pedestrian  activity. Using pedestrian counts of 302 street segments in Buffalo, New York, structural equation modelling highlights the multiple relationships between street network connectivity, built environment characteristics, and pedestrian volumes. Our findings suggest that both the conventional metric-based measure of physical connectivity and  geometric-based measure of visual connectivity have significant positive impacts on  pedestrian volumes, together with job density and land use mix. This outcome can  encourage practitioners to pay attention to both the geometry of street network and its  metric characteristics in order to create a pedestrian-friendly environment.   

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