In the middle of the 1997 Asian economic crisis, the Korean government attempted to alleviate urban development regulations and enacted a new Building Act to stimulate nagging housing market. Many merits from such alleviation, in particular, include t...
In the middle of the 1997 Asian economic crisis, the Korean government attempted to alleviate urban development regulations and enacted a new Building Act to stimulate nagging housing market. Many merits from such alleviation, in particular, include the increasing housing proportion for mixed-Use Residential developments, the tax exemption for business permits, and the abolition of Price Ceiling Regulation. In such circumstances, developers started to provide Mixed-Use Residential Buildings and in order to maximize their profits tried to receive incentives to maximize per floor area ratio. That has led to the boom of developing (30-floor or higher) high-rise Mixed-Use Residential Buildings since 1998. In return for high-rise building design, developers donated a larger portion of property for public use, creating a significant amount of "Quasi-Public" space on the ground-level.
Such high-rise Mixed-Use Residential Buildings developments were allowed in the heavily commercial area with good infrastructure and thus brought disproportionately large benefit to the developers. In many cases, however, their design lack consideration of existing residents and nearby commercial areas. Designed mainly for their own residents living in the high-rise structure, their sites show selfish design closed from pedestrians and outside visitors and actually discourage various pedestrian behaviors. It is the time to find a solution for the privatization of quasi-public open space donated for the floor-area development bonus, especially for those built since 2000 after the enactment of the housing act favorable to such developments.
In this context, this study paid attention to the quasi-public space around the high-rise Mixed-use Residential Building and defined pedestrian environment in a more inclusive manner. Pedestrian environment is defined as a space between the edge of the traffic road curb-line and the facade of nearby buildings. Based on the their observation, many urban design theorists claimed that the design quality of pedestrian environment influences the quality of pedestrian activities. In particular, they emphasized that design can have an more significant impact on pedestrian activities related to social interaction rather than utility trips for simply moving from point A to B. Therefore the major purpose of this study is to test the claimed but unproven hypothesis that the quality of pedestrian environment design on the quality of pedestrian's "social" behaviors.
For a case study, 43 Mixed-use Residential Buildings are selected with the following three criteria: (1) built in Seoul since 2000, (2) thirty-story or higher, and (3) having both commercial and residential uses in a single building structure. Their design quality of Pedestrian environment was captured by measuring 26 number of design attributes within the pedestrian environment of the 43 buildings. Filming was used to measure the quality of pedestrian behavior. Based on the footages, pedestrian behaviors are recorded by 3 categories: necessary, optional, and social behaivor.
With the environmental design attributes as explanatory variables, a regression analysis was performed for pedestrian activities. The result shows that pedestrian behaviors are indeed influenced by the design quality of pedestrian environment.
The R-Square from the five Regression Models per pedestrian behavior was about 0.5 to 0.6, which the R-Square of the square was analyzed as relatively high. From the analysis through the Regression Model, it was found that the physical design factors to increase pedestrian behaviors were the width of effective pedestrian roads, the number of tables and chairs placed in the Quasi-Public Spaces in commercial districts, the area of other Pocket Parks, the stair gap between pedestrian space and Quasi-Public Space, the visual transparency of the front section on the 1st floor, and the number of entrances from external space to a building. It was determined such results would be able to be used in designing the perimeter environment of Mixed-Use High-Rise Residential Building.
This study contains several significant contexts in conducting empirical analysis of what pedestrian space design factors influence on pedestrian behaviors, in drawing and objectifying pedestrian space design factors to increase the quality of pedestrian behaviors, in suggesting policies focused on the factors that have effect on pedestrian behaviors, and in being the initial large-scale research on pedestrian behaviors.
The recognized limits of this study lie in the low number of behavior samples due to the supply problem in the pedestrian behaviors research. However, it was thought that the results of this study had sufficient meaning in drawing design factors that may increase the quality of pedestrian behaviors and had the value as an experimental study to show the need of large-size research in the future.
This research was conducted to contribute to continuous effort to improve pedestrian space in integrated manner from pedestrian road to building area. If the subsequent studies to improve pedestrian space followed in the future, it will be expected to contribute to forming the identify of pedestrians' environment and increasing the quality of pedestrian behaviors, the nature of pedestrian environment planning along with the promoted effect of high rise and Mixed-Use-Development Building planning, thereby creating more attractive urban space.