The Impact Of Campus Built Environment On Walking Activities And Its Measurement

The university campus is an important place for teaching knowledge and fostering talents.It is an organic part of urban space.Walking is the most important travel mode on campus.Improving the campus walkability is of great value to promote students’ physical activity and communication,enhance the quality of teaching and educating,realize the construction goal of building a green and healthy campus.The Internet has greatly weakened the demand of college students for walking.Moreover,the large-scale campus constructions also pay insufficient attention to the pedestrian activities from the humanistic perspective,these phenomena will lead to a variety of negative effects,such as the reduction of the efficiency of campus communication activities and the lack of students’ physical activity,etc.The main research goal of this paper is to explore the impact of campus built environment on walking activities and define the action mechanism of the environment on walking behavior,so as to provide the measurement system and design strategies for evaluating the campus walking environment and guiding campus planning.This paper introduces the theory of urban built environment and walkability into campus and constructs a multi-level and multi-dimensional theoretical framework and index system of the impact of campus built environment on walking activities,and systematically optimizes the measurement indicators and methods according to the combination with the campus special space environment.The framework system contains 3 main levels,6 category levels and 52 element levels,including three environmental aspects:(1)objective material environment features,(2)subjective perception environment features and(3)micro streetscape environment features.Taking eight campuses in Tianjin as an example,this study systematically tests the applicability of the theoretical framework proposed in this paper from the perspective of one-dimensional and multi-dimensional environment features,and explores the impact mechanism of campus environmental factors on walking activities.Based on the results,the specific elements in the framework system that have a significant impact on the pedestrian volume are selected,and the measurement system for evaluating the campus walking environment and the university campus planning and design strategies based on the promotion of walking activities are proposed,in order to provide references for the contemporary campus planning and design and the practice of the optimization and transformation of the existing campus environments.The innovations of this study are to(1)build a multi-dimensional and multilevel theoretical framework for measuring the impact of the university campus built environment on walking activities,(2)put forward the measurement system of the campus Walk Score,which is the vital component of the theoretical framework,(3)clarify the action mechanism of the campus built environment on walking activities,and provide the environment evaluation system and design strategies based on the promotion of walking activities for the university campus.This paper consists of eight chapters.The first and second chapters are the introduction and literature review parts,which analyze and comb the current research background and status,and define the research direction and methods.The third chapter details the construction process of the theoretical framework of campus built environment’s effect on walking activities.The fourth and fifth chapters collect the element datas used to verify the theoretical framework and describe the outcomes.The sixth and seventh chapters discuss the verification results of the theoretical framework and the impact mechanism of campus built environment on walking activities from two aspects of single-dimensional and multi-dimensional environmental features,and put forward the final measurement system and design strategies for evaluating campus built environment and guiding campus planning.Chapter 8 summarizes the conclusions and puts forward the research prospects.