Pedestrian behaviour in urban area

The pedestrian behavior is influenced by several factors, including: characteristics of the user, numerousness of group, road infrastructures and environmental factors. These factors were studied by means the collection of data carried out in the city of Oristano (Sardinia-Italy) on eleven sidewalks and five crosswalks. The objective was to study the pedestrians behavior, researching the link between independent variables and the dependent variables that, for sidewalks was only the pedestrian speed while for crosswalks were the speed of crossing, the crossing time, the waiting time and the total time. The regression models were constructed by using ten sidewalks and four crosswalks so ignoring one for each. In the construction, were considered more variables that gradually were excluded on the basis of the p-value. The models thus detected were deemed significant according to their coefficient of determination and were validated with data from the sidewalk or crosswalk excluded from the construction of the same. Both for sidewalks that crosswalks were found some reliable models. The models construction is useful to improve the understanding of the pedestrians behavior and then obtain useful indications to design pedestrian infrastructures with characteristics closer to the real pedestrians behavior. The present study aims to give greater importance to pedestrians, analyzing how they relate with the urban context in which they live and how it conditions their behavior, so as to design infrastructure in which they feel an integral part and main actors of the urban scene, giving them the respect they deserve and a new sense of belonging to the city in which they live

FUNCTIONAL BARRIERS IN IASI URBAN AREA

The forced industrialisation of cities resulted in the construction of giant sites in outlying areas. December 1989 triggered the decline of industrial activities, wich could not be sustained any longer. Gradually, industrial halls have been abandoned, turning into ghosts of past glory, „black spots” that visually pollute the city’s image. The article highlitghts the tendency of these abandoned spaces to become true functional barriers. Occupying large spaces, the former industrial units are a barrier to communication (moving obstacle) and for the development of certain areas. Perceveid as dangerous places, with a low security level, the problem of abandoned areas would be a subject for the terriorial marketing strategies. in this regard, putting into value the results of a field survey, the article studies the perception of the urban brownfields, applied for Ia?i as a case study.industrial zone, functional barrier, communication, perception, image.

Poverty Assessment in Urban Area of Jodhpur District in Western Arid Region of Rajasthan

An attempt has been made to assess the poverty status in rural area of Jodhpur district of western Rajasthan. Two villages were randomly selected fall in the radius of 20 km from the Jodhpur city whereas another two villages were selected 60 km far from Jodhpur city with poor infrastructure facility and poor non-farm employment. 30 respondents were randomly selected from each selected village.A total of 120 respondents were selected from four village for the study. Simple tabulation method was used. For determining the poverty status, income method was used. From the study, it is revealed that agriculture, livestock, non-farm-labor activities are the main factor for poverty assessment. Size of land holding is a crucial factor. Marginal and small land holding couple with low income, are the main reason for poverty. The percentage of earners in the family size groups and percentage of dependents is inversely proportionate

Urban Area Development in Stochastic Cellular Automata

Urban is still an interesting topic to discuss whether in government or public studies. As economy grows in cities, many people are attracted to come to cities from villages to try their luck. In this paper, we investigated urban area development using von Thunen’s economic location theory. By using stochastic Cellular Automata which views land location as agents that will change their states in agriculture, industry, and service series, here we show how the urban areas dominated by economy, industry, and service activities develop to their surroundings and form areas with typical activities with urban area. Even for the farther agriculture area from urban center, von Thunen’s theory is still valid.von Thunen’s Theory, urban, Stochastic Cellular Automata, Markov matrices

Endogenous Structure of Polycentric Urban Area I: Isolated City

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the interplay between production, commuting and commuting and costs shapes the economy at intra-urban level. Specifically, we study how economic integration affects the internal stricture of cities and how decentralizing of production and consumption of goods in secondary employment centers allows firms located in a large city to maintain their performance. The main distinctive feature of the model is two-dimensional city structure with variable number of secondary business districts. Several new results in urban economics are established, which all agree with empirical evidence and some of them cannot be obtained in framework of the linear city model.City structure; Secondary business centers; Commuting costs, Communication costs

Flood risk assessment in an urban area: Vila Nova de Gaia

This paper proposes a methodology for flood risk assessment in a non fluvial urban flood. Two hazard classifications were considered; one with water depth and flow velocity classes and other with the product of water depth and flow velocity. The vulnerability assessment resulted in five classes obtained by cluster and principal components analysis. Flood risk maps were achieved by hazard and vulnerability classes’ crossover. The methodology is applied to a case study in the city of Vila Nova de Gaia. DTM with one meter resolution; HEC-HMS and HEC-RAS was applied to an urban catch- ment with one hour temporal scale; the 2001 statistical census tracts provide the demographic and social information. This methodology can be considered a straightforward and successful way to assess flood risk maps. However, the differences attained by the two hazard methods point out the need of further developments in the assessment of flood risk in stepped urban areas

Downscaling landsat land surface temperature over the urban area of Florence

A new downscaling algorithm for land surface temperature (LST) images retrieved from Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) was developed over the city of Florence and the results assessed against a high-resolution aerial image. The Landsat TM thermal band has a spatial resolution of 120 m, resampled at 30 m by the US Geological Survey (USGS) agency, whilst the airborne ground spatial resolution was 1 m. Substantial differences between Landsat USGS and airborne thermal data were observed on a 30 m grid: therefore a new statistical downscaling method at 30 m was developed. The overall root mean square error with respect to aircraft data improved from 3.3 °C (USGS) to 3.0 °C with the new method, that also showed better results with respect to other regressive downscaling techniques frequently used in literature. Such improvements can be ascribed to the selection of independent variables capable of representing the heterogeneous urban landscape

NEW SOCIAL RISKS AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF URBAN AREA

New social risks are key factors for social cohesion of local community and society. Currently new social risks which are caused by changes in a society appears more frequently than efore. While previously the groups of underprivileged were counted in endangered groups, now middle class can be affected as well. This report shows a spatial distribution of these risks. How to obtain this result is shown on a concrete example of the city of Ostrava. This report seeks to establish future influence of industrial city cohesion. Mainly processes of industrialization and desindustrialization are examined in a detail especially their effect to demo-social structure of the city. Results are based on the research of the project named „Industrial society in postindustrial city“ under which were large sociological research of Ostrava and long term monitoring of statistical indicators realised. All the social problems lead to disability to keep housing. Social risk distribution is surveyed in a context of large area, specifically in the Moravian-Silesian Region, where a centre of the agglomeration is just city of Ostrava.