Examining the Relationship between Urban Design Qualities and Walking Behavior: Empirical Evidence from Dallas, TX

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between street-level urban design perceptual qualities and walking behavior in the City of Dallas. While the city has the potential to experience growth in pedestrian activities, it exhibits a very low level of walking activity, placing it as one of the least walkable cities in the nation. To assess the impact of urban design qualities on walkability, we collected data on 23 features related to urban design, 11 built environment variables characterized as D variables comprising diversity, density, design, distance to transit, and destination accessibility. The sample included 402 street block faces in Dallas Downtown Improvement District. Accounting for spatial autocorrelation, we found that two urban design qualities, among five, including image-ability—such as a memorable quality of a place, and transparency—as to what degree people can see beyond the street’s edge—significantly influence pedestrian volume in downtown streets. These findings are in agreement with the two previous studies that used the same methodology in different cities (New York City, NYC and Salt Lake City, UT). According to the findings of these three studies, the other urban design qualities including human scale, complexity, as well as enclosure, are not playing a significant role in walkability, despite the theoretical justification and the extensive operationalization efforts. The findings of this study draw policy makers’ attention to creating more appealing and walkable places through the implementation of these urban design qualities.

Built Environment Determinants of Pedestrian Activities and Their Consideration in Urban Street Design

“…Controlling for the D variables as introduced above, on the street level, only transparency was found to significantly influence pedestrian volumes. This is consistent with findings from other studies [29,30]. The only exemption is imageability, which was identified in one study as a variable that significantly increases pedestrian volumes [29].…”

Measuring the perceptual features of coastal streets: a case study in Qingdao, China

“…The physical features can quantify street environment based on the visual information, such as floor area ratio, greenness, enclosure, height-to-width ratio, streets scale and tidiness (Alexander et al 1977, Henry 1993, Moniruzzaman and Paéz 2012, Harvey et al 2015. Reid Ewing and Handy explored five physical features of street: imageability, enclosure, human scale, transparency, complexity, which were possible to measure urban design quality (Ewing and Handy 2009, Ewing and Clemente 2013, Hamidi and Moazzeni 2019, Nagata et al 2020, Qiu et al 2021a, 2021b.…”

Factors influencing walking trips. Evidence from Gdynia, Poland

“…The impact of the built environment on walking activity can be expressed in the development of 3D concept (design, density, diversity) [ 47 ] into 5D concept (adding destination and distance) [ 48 ] and further—into 7D (adding demographics and demand management) [ 22 , 49 ]. The 7D concept is not only of theoretical nature—it has been used to evaluate how urban design qualities impact walkability in the central part of Dallas, US [ 50 ].…”

“…The built environment is especially relevant for active modes, as they are more (directly) " exposed to the surroundings compared to car and public transport users " [ 37 ]. Determinants that shape walking activity, in this case, are land-use diversity, intersection density [ 49 ], density [ 51 ], urban structure [ 52 ] and information [ 50 ]. Also, the type of area surveyed could influence the walking distance [ 53 ].…”