Visual engagement with urban street edges: insights using mobile eye-tracking

Abstract

This study provides empirical insight into the extent to which pedestrians visually engage with urban street edges and how social and spatial factors impact such engagement. This was achieved using mobile eye-tracking. The gaze distribution of 24 study participants was systematically recorded as they carried out everyday tasks on differing streets. The findings demonstrated that street edges are the most visually engaged component of streets; that street edge visual engagement is impacted by everyday social tasks as well as the spatial and physical materiality of edges on differing streets; and that street edges, which attract a lot of visual engagement while undertaking optional tasks, also attract greater amounts of visual engagement while undertaking necessary tasks. These findings offer new insight into urban street edge engagement from the direct perspective of street inhabitants and in doing so provide greater understanding of how street edges are experienced.

Understanding Visual Engagement with Urban Street Edges along Non-Pedestrianised and Pedestrianised Streets Using Mobile Eye-Tracking

“…Building upon the points made, little is known about the way that streets, spanning both different non-pedestrianised and pedestrianised streets, influence the extent to which visual engagement is predominantly focused upon street edge ground floors. Previous mobile eye-tracking research has highlighted that pedestrians visually engage with the totality of surrounding street edges to variable extents along different streets [14]. However, it is not fully understood if this insight is transferable when considering ground floors along differing non-pedestrianised and differing pedestrianised streets.…”

“…Previous research has highlighted how contrasting activities affect how people behave in urban settings, providing opportunity to categorise peoples' everyday actions into optional and necessary activities [1]. Mobile eye-tracking has subsequently shown how these activity groups influence wider street edge visual engagement [14]. However, no studies have focused on examining the impact that these pedestrian activities have upon ground floor visual engagement along non-pedestrianised and pedestrianised streets.…”

“…Existing discourse provides an opportunity to hypothesise that pedestrians will visually engage more with street edge ground floors compared to upper floors along both non-pedestrianised and pedestrianised streets, [1,2,34,35]. Building upon previous eye-tracking research, that was not ground floor specific and did not systematically assess differences across non-pedestrianised and pedestrianised streets [14], it is anticipated that everyday activities and differing streets walked will influence the amount with which ground floors are visually engaged.…”

“…These factors have impacted how experientially engaging and stimulating today's street edges are for pedestrians, subsequently reducing their capacity to positively influence peoples' day-to-day quality of life [10][11][12]. Even though this is understood, there still remains a limited systematic understanding of the general principles that characterise the way in which people visually engage with street edges [3,13,14]. This makes it challenging to guide socially and experientially responsive street edge design intervention.…”

“…This data collection technique captures quantified information on gaze distribution, through tracking eye-movements, allowing a detailed understanding of specific influences on cognition and perception [29]. Recently, there have been a number of mobile eye-tracking studies in outdoor urban situations [14,21,30], as well as indoor eye-tracking studies that assess how people distribute their gaze upon images of urban settings [31][32][33]. This highlights a steady increase in the number of eye-tracking studies assessing how people visually engage with various urban stimuli.…”