The Lester and Sally Entine Faculty of Humanities

The School of History

The Department of Geography and Human Environment

The Urban Built Environment and Spatial

Distribution of Pedestrians: The Case of Tel Aviv

This dissertation is submitted for a PhD. Degree in

Tel Aviv University by:

Yoav Lerman

The dissertation was supervised by:

Prof. Itzhak Omer

May 2014

Abstract
Recently, there has been a growing awareness of the importance of pedestrian
movement in the urban realm, while recognizing its environmental, health and safety
advantages (Moudon et al., 1997; Frank et al., 2006; Jacobsen, 2003). The growing
importance of planning for pedestrians has not passed over Israel, where a few studies
were done on this subject, mainly related to road safety (for a review: Hakkert and
Matar, 2007).

The general objective of this study is to examine the relationship between two categories
of urban morphology (traditional morphology vs. contemporary morphology) and
pedestrian movement in the city from a geographical perspective. The examination of
pedestrian traffic focused on the extent and spatial pattern of this movement. This study
is based on empirical research in selected areas in the city of Tel Aviv, and aims to
contribute to understanding of the relationship between different urban design paradigms
and the character of the built environment resulting from them. Moreover, this study
may contribute to improving the prediction of pedestrian movement in urban areas that
are already built and those that will be planned and built in the future, as well as to
understanding how to create built environment which encourages pedestrian movement.

Generally speaking, the road network structure can be divided to traditional on one hand
and contemporary on the other according to the degree of road connectivity and the
structure of the setup of the road hierarchy. According to Marshall (2005), in areas
consisting of a traditional road structure the main roads attracted both the largest volume
of traffic and provided the maximum accessibility to various buildings and land uses.
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However, under in areas consisting of a contemporary road structure the functions of

traffic and accessibility were separated. The main roads became roads meant for fast
moving private vehicles with no direct accessibility to any land use whatsoever, while
the land use accessibility was moved to less central roads (See also: Hebbert, 2005).

Based on the current scientific knowledge about the distribution of pedestrian movement
in urban space, this study focused on four main dimensions of the built environment
which have potential influence on pedestrian movement: (i) a spatial dimension which is
based on road network analysis; (ii) a functional dimension of land uses such as retail
fronts and public transit stops; (iii) a demographic dimension which relates to population
attributes such as residential density; (iv) and a physical dimension of road sections. The
research was conducted in selected research areas which represent different
neighborhood types in terms of morphology.

The research questions are:

1. How does the urban morphology affect pedestrian volume movement and
distribution?
2. What is the relative contribution of the spatial, functional, demographic and physical
dimensions of the built environment to pedestrian movement?
3. How does the relationship among the built environment features affect pedestrian
movement in urban areas with different morphological character?

Overall, four research areas where examined in the city of Tel Aviv. Each of these areas
was divided to two adjacent sub-areas according to their morphological character one
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is considered traditional and the other is contemporary. The research areas where picked
from central city parts as well as from the outskirts in order to represent different
demographic characteristics and different residents-visitors ratios.

Information gathered for each of the research areas included vector data on the road
network, land use at the building level, demographic information at the statistical zones
level and physical information on the road sections. In addition, information about
pedestrian movement was collected using traffic counts that sampled pedestrian
movement in selected road segments in the research areas. The information gathered
was used to analyze the relationship between the built environment and pedestrian
movement for each of the research areas and sub-areas and for analysis at the city level
based on the aggregation of the data of all the research areas.

The research hypothesis is that the difference in the built environment features among
the research areas would lead to a different pattern of walking in them. The entire
research sample, which included 215 road segments where pedestrian movement volume
was sampled, was divided into 15 different samples according to the different
geographical areas that the study dealt with. These 15 research samples were used as the
basis for statistical analyses that were made to find the most significant variables for
pedestrian movement using both bivariate correlations and multivariate regressions. In
addition, the correlations among the significant research variables from different
dimension of the built environment were tested to understand the relationships between
these dimensions.

Analysis of the built environment features of the four research areas and the sub-areas
that make them showed that different design paradigms lead to the creation of urban
areas that differ in substantial and consistent ways in various built environment features.
Specifically, considerable differences were found in land use intensity, retail fronts
distribution and road network structure. The traditional spaces tend to be more intensive,
have a more connected road network, and consist of a higher presence of commercial
land use. In particular, these differences stand out when examining sub-areas that have
different planning character and are located next to each other, as examined in this
study.

In addition to the difference in the built environment features, significant disparities in

pedestrian movement distribution were found between the contemporary sub-areas and
the traditional sub-areas. A higher volume of pedestrian movement was observed in the
pre-modern sub-areas. This disparity between the sub-areas that have different
morphological character is evident in the fact that even in the traditional sub-area where
the lowest pedestrian movement volume was observed, the average movement volume
per road segment was higher than the corresponding movement volume in the
contemporary sub-area with the highest pedestrian movement volume.

Moreover, the research findings indicate that the built environment features have a
significant impact on pedestrian distribution in the city streets. However, this influence
may be differential in accordance with the built environment character. The spatial
dimension of the road network structure is the dimension with the highest level of
influence on pedestrian movement compared to other dimensions, and in particular has
the highest contribution to the correlation coefficients in the multivariate regressions
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employed in this research. This finding is consistent with results of previous studies
(Raford and Ragland, 2006; Jiang, 2009a). Also, commercial land uses are related to
greater pedestrian movement in their vicinity as found in previous studies (Chu, 2005;
Zook et al., 2012). However, a finding that does not appear in the scientific literature is
the significant relationship found between pedestrian movement distribution and the
physical dimension, namely the road section which consists of the division between the
pavement and the carriage way. The physical dimension has stronger connection to
pedestrian movement in the contemporary sub-areas, where the spatial and functional
dimensions tend to have weaker connections to pedestrian movement. Combining the
built environment dimensions together in multivariate regressions, showed that for 13
out of 15 research samples combining variables from different built environment
dimensions gave higher levels of correlation coefficients compared to using variable
from a single dimension. Hence, pedestrian movement is a complex phenomenon
affected by various factors that comprise the built environment.

In addition to the ways in which the built environment affects pedestrian movement
distribution, pedestrian movement itself affects the ways in which changes in the built
environment occur over time. The spatial structure leads to a certain pedestrian
movement and as a side effect along the roads where there are high levels of pedestrian
movement commerce forms and takes place. This commercial activity is based on the
pedestrian movement and helps intensify it further in what is described as the economic
multiplication effect of the city movement economy (Hillier, 1996a). Hence, pedestrian
movement distribution impacts the functional dimension and in particular retail fronts
distribution, that is to say there is a two way connection between pedestrian movement
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and commerce commercial presence encourages pedestrian movement in its vicinity,

and pedestrian movement encourages development of commercial presence. The results
also show that pedestrian movement distribution affects the physical dimension through
creation of road sections that are more convenient for pedestrians where their volume is
high.

The spatial dimension, as noted, has a prominent connection to pedestrian movement

compared to the other dimensions. The combination of the spatial dimension and the
pedestrian movement that formulates may lead to changes in the functional and physical
dimensions. These findings serve to substantiate the claim that the spatial structure has a
significant effect on various urban dynamics (Hillier et al., 1993; Hiller, 1996a).
Therefore, when dealing with urban planning it is advisable to dedicate much thought to
the planning of the road network, which is inherently static and difficult to change. This
observation is compatible with other diagnoses in this field (Hillier, 1996b; Kashef,
2010; Lerman et al., 2014). Another conclusion arising from this study is that in order to
change land uses in an urban area which is already built (for example, densification or
intensification) may require certain changes in that area's road network to allow for a
more intense land use pattern to develop.