Design Research On The Use Of Elevated Walkways As Pedestrian-Oriented Public Spaces

Human transportation behavior has changed in concurrence with the development and technological progress of civilization. Throughout history, humans have continuously pursued faster modes of transportation, but as each new mode of transportation was adopted, the urban landscape was also changed in order to accommodate it. As a result, the design and layout of today’s cities are no longer appropriate for the most primitive of transportation modes:walking.Originally, cities were organized into a dense grid of small blocks and narrow lanes, convenient for walking and cycling. But since the introduction of the automobile, city streets have continued to widen. Furthermore, in the past, urban residents used the street space for a variety of daily activities, such as socializing, exercising, clothes washing, cooking, etc., in addition to using it for transit. Today, residents have surrendered this space to the automobile, and as the number of cars continues to increase, the pedestrian environment is becoming increasingly fragmented.Currently, many Chinese city centers contain roads of ten or more lanes. Roads of this width severely disrupt the pedestrian environment, by increasing both the crossing distance and the crossing waiting time for pedestrians. In order to solve this problem, the Chinese government began building pedestrian bridges in the 1980s, in order to fill the gaps in the pedestrian network, provide a safe and direct route for pedestrians, and to decrease the amount of interference between pedestrians and vehicles. Unfortunately, the majority of these pedestrian bridges have not served their intended purpose, which is evidenced by the fact that many pedestrians choose to continue to cross at ground level rather than walk along the pedestrian bridge. The reason for this is that these pedestrian bridges provide neither the most direct route nor an attractive route, and pedestrians are therefore unwilling to ascend them.The goal of this paper is to research the viability of elevated public spaces as a solution to this problem. The paper can be divided into four major sections. The first section analyzes the city structure in order to determine the role of the elevated public space within the entire pedestrian network. The following section analyzes the environmental conditions necessary for a city to support this type of elevated public space. Next, the specific design elements of the structure are analyzed in order to determine which areas can be further improved. Finally, a design solution is proposed, in order to establish a new model for elevated urban spaces that can then be applied to future city planning and refurbishment.