Perspective Chapter: A Conceptualization of Measuring People's Activity in Sustaining Urban Life

*Haider Jasim Essa Al-Saaidy*

## **Abstract**

The criterion of human activity could be one of the critical points in dealing with street life mainly and urban vitality frequently. An attempt to classify the distinct patterns of activities is recently required. The potentiality of a street is to formulate people's interaction and responses to the street edges and reactions to each other. This chapter highlights the more significant outline regarding human activities and their patterns, besides their classifications. In this regard, the chapter aims to create a conceptual framework to form a platform for analyzing and studying the effectiveness of street life at the micro level. In this chapter, a research type is a descriptive-analytical approach; regarding the method, it employs a broad spectrum of related literature reviews. Consequently, the street edge generates the three main (and their oppositional) human activities. These activities can be categorized as necessary versus optional, individual against social, and staying as opposed to moving. Increasing the calls toward the sustainability of urban livability and street life versus decreasing the motor-based street has become a more significant demand. The street is a vital milieu that offers different opportunities for those who present and use such urban space as the street.

**Keywords:** sustainability, urban form, street edge, activity pattern, human activity

## **1. Introduction**

In this chapter, the street and social life will be addressed according to the three categories of activities observed along the street edge: necessary versus optional, individual versus social, and staying versus moving. These three types of activities occur in a street when people respond either to the street's edge or interact with each other. The primary objective of this research is to quantify the different responses of people who use the street. The observations could be based on the ethnographic technique that allows the observer to record people's reactions and interactions without affecting people's behavior. This chapter aims to create a conceptual framework of human activities with a clear classification related to the three categories: necessary, individual, and social, and their opposites. Furthermore, there is a lack of a hard

border between these activities when experiencing street life. However, priorities play a crucial role in distinguishing between different street life activities. Urban context grants different opportunities for those who use the urban spaces to share their varied responses and ambitions and involve in such activities as a conversation, sitting, walking, staying, standing, and observing when the street links the accommodation of such activities and actions in a certain milieu [1–3].

The urban ingredients could be range from fine level to the hard scale of components and elements that give the distinct characteristics of the entire urban pattern. Also, analyzing and examining the urban parameters can be typified into different levels based on the study's primary purpose: micro level, macro level, and local and global level. In this regard, comprehending the link of the spatial qualities at a micro and macro level involves knowledge of how spatial factors in an urban context are arranged around each other and the influence of the configurational pattern on the street network and people's behavior. Bianca [4] denotes that the physical setting signifies, "… every genuine cultural tradition, architecture, and urban form" and that this "… can be seen as a natural expression of prevailing spiritual values and beliefs …. it is an outcome of tradition and daily practices which correspond to certain spiritual principles" ([4], p. 22). People who use different urban spaces can be categorized into two key activities: walkers (movement-on, movement-through) and stayers. The objectives of these two kinds differ in terms of the purpose of the destination [5].

Responding to the behavioral settings in an urban context is subject reciprocally to the parameters of the surrounding environment and its entities. Different studies and scholars addressed broadly and thoughtfully the people's response and their interaction whether with the street space or between each other as social interaction [6–9]. Other studies dealt with micro level, where people come to interact with just adjacent street edge [10–15]. Moreover, some scholars went further in order to analyze the interrelationship between the private-public edge of the street and how individuals could respond to it [1, 14–16]. The behavioral studies in relation to the environmental setting also addressed significant findings in highlighting the symbiotic mutual relationship between the incentive of the physical settings as the built environment and the individuals' response and their reactions [17, 18].

The centrality and integration in computing the street network and how a certain link(s) play a key role in shaping not only the people stream but also how forming the individuals' behavior along with the edges. These studies of centrality offered different approaches in order to make a correlation between people and urban space, such as multiple centrality assessment (MCA) and space syntax (SS) [19–21].

## **2. Method and materials**

In this chapter, the research method is a descriptive-analytical approach, on the subject of the method, it uses a broad spectrum of an associated literature review. In order to capture the more significant vocabulary of people activities, the chapter tends to classify activity into two main approaches: urban form and human activity and street characteristics and activity pattern. The materials have been derived from previous studies regarding the urban form and peoples' activities. Moreover, identifying human activities depends formally on recent research. Besides, there is no hard border between human activities. Instead, one can conduct multiple acts or responses toward the characteristics of the built environment synchronously.

*Perspective Chapter: A Conceptualization of Measuring People's Activity in Sustaining Urban Life DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108901*

#### **2.1 Urban form and human activity**

In behavior-environment interaction, Canter [22] argues that "the environment providing perceptual stimuli … [and] also be thought of as a filter … we are always in the environment to carry out certain activities, and we usually carry out these activities with other individuals … this is the fact that we actively modify, build and influence our physical surroundings." For this reason, Canter [22] alludes that, "the physical environment surrounds and supports all human activities. It is, therefore, expected that the study of human-environment should be as complex and multi-faceted as is the range of studies of human behavior." Many urban studies and research examined the nature of influences of the built environment on human activities, whether psychological, social, and functional, such as Brownson et al. [23], Caro [24], Craig et al. [25], Greenwald and Boarnet [26] Handy et al. [27], King et al. [28], Shay et al. [29], and Sun et al. [30].

A considerable number of scholars addressed the interrelationship between human activities and use patterns. The density and diversity of land use analysis determine the nature of activities that are likely to take place; these accord with the uses along a street. Jacobs [31] refers to that, "in dense, diversified city area, people still walk … the more intensely various and close-grained the diversity in an area, the more walking [where] life attracts life." Montgomery [32] states that activity is an inevitable result that derives from two distinct but quite related concepts: vitality and diversity. The former means a successful urban space and its characterization from others. It considers the pedestrian flow where people in and around the street can benefit from the facilities that the street offers, at different times of the day. It is a place where people meet for various purposes; "… the presence of an active street life, and generally the extent to which a place feels alive or lively. Indeed, successful places appear to have their own pulse or rhythm, a life force" ([32], p. 97) (**Figure 1**).

Montgomery [32] suggests that secondary diversity relates to enterprises and services which respond to primary uses and offer different amenities in serving consumers' needs. Thus, "areas of high development density can be planned to accommodate and stimulate mixed-use and self-generating secondary diversity, [in this regard], diversity must be sufficiently complex to stimulate public contact, transactions and street life … for this to happen, streets need to be active, to accommodate and generate diversity, and they must be permeable. They must also engender a sense of belonging, familiarity and the respect of users" ([32], p. 103, 105, 109). Canter [22] states that, to enable space operation, it is necessary to examine the relationship between several groupings of spatial interactions; people in relation to physical objects, people with regard to other people, groups in relation to physical environment, and groups with regard to other groups.

Moreover, land use, to some extent, deals with large-scale (global and local or even neighborhood), while the activities pattern tends to address uses at the micro and street scales. In a sense, the oldest built environment in the most traditional area emanates from the street scope and daily needs that might be characterized as highfrequency activities. While in a preplanned order, the activity pattern is controlled by the top-down approach that determines the activities according to land use-based action. The difference between the traditional and modern neighborhoods adds to the other characteristics that define the activity pattern, such as the street pattern and block-plot system, besides the land use itself. These play a significant role in formulating the relationship of people to the street edge. To track the activity pattern, the current study addresses three types of human activity, namely: necessary versus optional, individual as opposed to social, and staying against moving. Three pairs of activities are likely to happen in the street in different ways, with various densities.

#### **Figure 1.**

*Three essential entities in formulating the vitality of urban place: activity, form physical attributes, and image (meaning and conception), Montgomery [32]. Source: based on Canter [33]; Gehl [7] and Punter [34].*

Thus, the street scale is the domain to examine human activities after defining each kind of activity and disclosing the ability of the street edge to formulate the interaction, whether between people and the edge (private and public) or between people themselves. This interaction with its interfaces (human-edge) is responsible for promoting street life and, in turn, social interaction.

### **2.2 Spatial configuration and activity pattern**

Gehl [7] states that, "urban structures and planning influence human behavior and the ways in which cities operate." This attracts attention to the humanity of the street as a pulsatile path through various activities. Jacobs diagnoses different issues that cause a decrease in the social life of outdoor spaces. Jacobs [31] states that, "street in cities serve many purposes besides carrying vehicles, and city sidewalks—the pedestrian part of the street—serve many purposes besides carrying pedestrians … a city sidewalk by itself is nothing." A community organizes its functions spatially, and this affects human behavior through the distribution pattern of activities and their locations along the street; these might also be characterized by the integrated street that has a high number of connections to other streets within a short metric distance [35].

Despite having their own private spaces, people still demand spaces to interact socially and/or economically with other members of the community. Human activities tend to take their place in a physical space, where the mechanism of the organization of activities depends on society itself (privately and officially). In turn, they impact the built environment as well. Consequently, the spatial configuration of a built environment helps to shape human behavior in the urban space based on the possibilities for social control, and opportunities for economic activity and social interaction [35].

## *Perspective Chapter: A Conceptualization of Measuring People's Activity in Sustaining Urban Life DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108901*

During their study of the traditional area at South Bank of London, Penn et al. [36] diagnosed four factors, which work together to enable apparently natural relationships between various types of activities and facilities. These factors can be summarized as follows: "the network of streets and spaces in an area produces a pattern of natural pedestrian and vehicular movement. Most movement in urban areas is through movement. Once shops have set up on a street, they become destinations for to movement in their own right. And through movement alone is not enough to produce a successful urban shopping area" ([36], p. 82). Hence, the movement pattern and street network with land use play a significant role in emanating the activities in certain urban places. Hillier [37] adopts centrality as a process to study the center, such as in a city. Apparently, the concentration of mixed use of activities and functional diversity are placed in a prominent location in a city, called a center or subcenter. Also, Hillier [37] adopts the term "live centrality" to express the spectrum of activities that collectively form the centrality elements, such as retail, markets, catering, entertainment and other activities that engage people, and in turn, benefit from movement. Van Nes [38] states that the location of functions or activities depends on the configuration of the grid pattern where movement takes place.

Recently, the emphasis has been placed on the notion of the active and inactive edge in terms of theoretical or practical investments in the urban field. These refer to the capacity of the edges to attract and hold people by creating and continuing social activities, which thereby make the urban edge a socio-spatial factor in the urban fabric [39]. This meaning also is denoted by Alexander [40] who states that an effective and attractive edge that takes a scalloped shape includes various activities as pockets; moreover, "to make the space lively, the scalloped edge must surround the space completely" ([40], p. 601). Marshall [41] distinguishes between patterns of physical entities and patterns of activity or use. The former concerns roads, land use areas, built area, and open spaces, while the second addresses trip-making, commercial activities, or trajectories of movement [41] (**Figure 2**). Moreover, Marshall [42] refers to that, "the social space of streets is the single contiguous public off of which private spaces are carved. … in this sense, the public-private filtering of the building-plot-street system enables settlements to exist—they enable large agglomeration of humans to coexist in a limited area. This is why the streets are not merely voids between blocks of buildings, but must be seen as integral to the concept and fabric of a city."

At the global and local scale, the spatial configuration of urban elements; plot, block, and street network are the essential entities that lead human activities and control the distribution pattern of activities. Furthermore, the underlying characteristics

#### **Figure 2.**

*The classification depends on the purpose of its application. (a) The transport modeller might see a 'cross-nodal network' of routes where they constitute the adjacent buildings, while (b) a planner or developer might see a 'square tessellation' of land parcels where the streets constitute the edge of buildings. Source: based on Marshall ([41], p. 23).*

#### *Sustainable Regional Planning*

of each urban element (in terms of shape, size, number, and its interrelation to the other components in space), also determine the type of present or potential activities. Regarding the micro scale, the street as a transitional edge is constituted by adjacent buildings and their characteristics play a crucial role in controlling the interrelationship between the private and public space and the level of interaction between them.

#### **2.3 Street characteristics and activity pattern**

Computing the value of the street in terms of its proportional position to the surrounding links within the network system is another significant aspect in evaluating the level of human activity and the degree of its presence in a particular area. Can and Heath [10] suggest that, when integration and connectivity in spatial patterns are higher, social interaction will increase. Additionally, modern urban areas are likely to be more introverted than the inner city and traditional regions. Most often, activities in modernist areas tend to be located on the edge, where the primary route contrasts with inner parts in the traditional city. Carmona, Tiesdell et al. [43] state that the term street and other labels, such as boulevard and avenue, reveal design elements lacking in the term "road." The main goal of these labels is to accommodate and reconcile the demands of the movement, social life space, and urban activities. Collectively and substantially, they need to emerge in the same physical space.

Thus, the notion of the street is to define social space and to secure an effective connection with the whole network system [43]. Different terminologies and definitions are given to identify the street space itself and its relation to others. Kostof [44] argues that the history of the street so far has to be addressed, either as an urban form or as an institution. On the one hand, the street belongs to the architecture and urban study archives as it is a physical phenomenon. The street is an entity that consists of a roadway, usually a pedestrian way, and bordering buildings; however, the street as an institution is a critical theme. In this regard, the street has an economic role and social importance.

The traditional aim of the street is to enable the movement to exchange goods, conduct social exchange, and communicate. These three aspects are inseparably related to the street space, where those activities are located, and then to the whole street life ([44], p. 189). Porta et al. [45] explain the relationship between street centrality and economic activities in a certain area of Barcelona by adopting the measure of multiple centrality assessment. The aim of using MCA analysis is to quantify the centrality value and its relationship to economic activities. According to Porta et al. [45], two kinds of economic activity can be recognized: primary and secondary. In the relationship between economic activities and spatial networks lies a fundamental question about the mechanism of distribution of activities in the urban context and the role of urban structure, functions and other capabilities in shaping this relationship [45].

## **3. Identifying activity pattern**

The aimed of urban space usage is to create an interactional relationship between individuals as occupants of space and activities within a behavioral framework. This relationship can also cover the nature of linkages between individuals and with the kind of activities present in the same space. The reinforcing factors in a particular space might be utterly different from one space to another, and between regions and countries, according to a series of considerations. In other words, what may be

### *Perspective Chapter: A Conceptualization of Measuring People's Activity in Sustaining Urban Life DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108901*

an enhanced factor in a given space might be a debilitating factor in another one place [46]. A clear pattern of activity relates to the classification process of compound parameters, which increases in limited areas or specified spatial dimensions. However, minimal or single settings mainly affect large-scale classifications, and this can refer to the comprehensive analysis of commercial streets. This is likely to be irrelevant in creating the distinctive urban characteristics of a whole city. Rapoport [47] argues that the environment is perceived by people, which causes a reaction before any act is taken to specifically analyze it. There are two types of meanings embodied in a built environment, latent, and manifest, since that environment apparently grants cues for behavior and represents a form of people's behavior. These two types of meanings relate to the nature of the activity of buildings within a whole urban context. This can be classified into four components for each activity: (1) the activity proper, (2) the specific way of doing it, (3) additional, adjusted, or associated activities that become part of the activity system, and (4) the meaning of the activity ([47, 48], p. 15) (**Figure 3**).

In this respect, Chapin [49] refers to an outline working schema based on human activity systems, which includes two steps: the first is behavioral constructs through the spatial structure of the city and a physical construct as the second step. According to Chapin [49], "environment is construed not only as a structure of land uses and communications channels with physical dimensions but also as a structure of institutions with significant social and economic dimensions, all influencing and begin influenced by human activity." To examine and evaluate a human activity that could occur in an environment, Chapin [49] suggests a linear scale that consists of minimum dissatisfactions and maximum satisfaction. Two factors can govern the stimulus of activities that are primarily reflected in human behavior; these are *pull* factors and *push* factors, where the first decision is mostly based on *push* factors, and the second is based on *pull* factors. Furthermore, people stand between these *push-pull* factors in response to their surrounding physical environment (**Figure 4**).

Street space must be conceived as an outdoor milieu that contributes to the sense-making of a place through a considerable number of activities and facilities.

#### **Figure 4.**

*A linear relationship among three components of behaviour. Source: based on Chapin [49].*

This includes a place to relax and enjoy the urban experience, a venue for a range of different activities, including entertainment, sport and play areas, a site for civic or political functions, and most importantly a place for walking or sitting-out. A strict interrelationship between the public space and people who live and work around it is an essential aim in raising the public space value through its spatial performance [50]. A street is a place to meet people and is a place for people to have an opportunity to be intimate, anonymous and in some way private. It also promotes concentrated spaces for face-to-face activity [50].

The definition of activities is an essential characteristic of understanding and effectively interacting with urban space and acknowledges a symbolic and meaningful pattern. This helps to form the crucial determinants of activities and social interactions, so that they coincide with the surrounding environment. This occurs by decoding the process of communication between people and the urban context, which is mediated by the activities [47]. In this respect, physical form and activity are congruent, and this enables the adoption of the idea of the activity-based place [6]. Thus, according to Jacobs [51], "the interplay of human activity with the physical place has an enormous amount to do with the greatness of a street. It is difficult or impossible to separate the two … streets are settings for activities that bring people together."

In his seminal work, Gehl [11] refers to three types of activity: necessary, optional, and social activity (**Figure 5**). This classification of urban space activities can cover a large range of behaviors throughout people's presence in space. It might start with a small indicator, such as talking between people and ending with a festival or an annual activity, to promote the value and quality of space. Diversity is considered one of the leading characters of three types of activities regarding the urban context [7, 11, 52]. Thus, the street space in a city is a shared milieu that embraces people and activities alike. This sharing covers the responsibility of designing the street space, where spaces are always much broader than the specialized expertise in designing the built environment. In other words, the design of a space, cannot be separated from daily life and the social activities of urban areas as well as other aspects and institutional considerations in making a decision [43].

## **3.1 Necessary versus optional activities**

Necessary activities can be defined as a kind of compulsory act with a diverse degree of participation among others. The occurrence of these activities is not affected by the physical scope. It fluctuates due to dependence on the doer, where these activities constrain the interactions as a crucial part of their life, and regardless of the conditions of the surrounding environment [11]. The second is optional activities, which are based on the desires of participants and the extent to which they help to motivate the individuals to take part in these activities. Exterior conditions are regarded as one

*Perspective Chapter: A Conceptualization of Measuring People's Activity in Sustaining Urban Life DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108901*

#### **Figure 5.**

*Graphic representation of the connection between outdoor quality and outdoor activity. An increase in outdoor quality gives a boost to optional activities. The increase in activity level invites a substantial increase in social activities. Source: Gehl [7].*

of the most critical factors in achieving this kind of activity, one of which is the built environment and natural conditions. Opportunities for occupancy of the place can increase if there are high-quality conditions within the place. Individuals are automatically attracted by places, which include what people like and desire [11].

Jacobs [31] tends to distinguish between two main activities: primary and secondary uses. The former is employed to bring people to particular places that function as an attractive point, such as offices, factories, and dwellings, as well as the main destinations of, for example, educational institutions, entertainment centers, and recreation. In addition, museums, libraries, and galleries are primary uses. The secondary uses serve the primary purposes and include a wide range of activities and events [31]. Porta et al. [45] offer a description of primary activities by stating that, "primary activities are characterized by a larger-than-local market or catchment area; they are typically highly skilled, larger, or more specialized economic activities, such as wholesale, industry, and those not related to the public or not mainly serving the end-users; and their location choice is more likely to be driven by a formal top-down decision-making process" ([45], pp. 1476–1479). The distribution pattern of economic activities has significant implications since it influences the availability of land for particular economic uses and for people who benefit from these activities [53].

Furthermore, Porta et al. [45] write descriptively about secondary activities by saying that a local market or catchment area characterize secondary activities, and these are typically retail and other services that serve the regular needs of the populace on a daily or frequent basis. Accordingly, secondary activities can be defined as the kind of economic setting that sustain and embody the sense of a lively and walkable local community at the scale of the neighborhood [45]. The primary uses are associated with, and represent, necessary activities, while the secondary uses are optional and social activities according to [7, 11]. Moirongo [54] refers to the relationship between street function and activity pattern. He states that the street is characterized by heterogeneous and mixed uses that tend to be for optional and social activities. In comparison, the street is identified by monofunctional and homogeneous uses that contain necessary activities. This, however, emphasizes the earlier statements that necessary activities are obligatory for those accustomed to attending a regular activity for a particular purpose, such as school, work, shopping, or waiting for someone. Meanwhile, the optional activities relate to a degree of desirability, besides the impulse factors that attract people's engagement with activity.

## **3.2 Individual versus social activities**

Social activities tend to see individuals gathering in public spaces. These activities cover a wide range of people's acts while they are in a place. Spontaneity is one of the features of these activities, where people, at the same place, can meet each other and talk. It seems to be quite difficult to isolate and separate these three activities from each other within a certain space; however, the weight of activity may vary from one space to another [11]. Thwaites et al. [39] pay more attention to social activity as a key factor in social restoration. Thus, social activity is, "soft, active or engaging edges are commonly associated with a social activity, usually generated by their capacity to hold the attention of passers-by. Such edges are also associated with having transitional qualities defining an overlap of adjacent realms, their social activity related to accessibility across it and opportunities to be stationary coupled with things that can hold attention" ([39], p. 81).

The need to return to social space and urban social activities has become a persistent demand in order to promote the vitality of a city. Shared places provide a platform to create an integral relationship between various aspects of a city's elements and its people. One of the aspects of shared space is to reduce motor flow and constrain its speed. Therefore, shared urban places are pedestrian orientated and give rights to people to invest in the street as a social milieu. The role of social interaction in an urban context is witnessed through its components, namely streets, sidewalks, and parks, which represent intermediate spaces between activities and human behavior. One of the concerns about urban space is the meaning of context in terms of cross-connection between activities and space [43].

The range of opportunities that could be offered by the street edge contributes significantly to creating social life and attracting people to share their activities with others. In this regard, Jacobs [31] prioritizes the commercial, entertainment, and other aspects represented by, for example, restaurants, shopping centers, retailers, and cafes. When located on the sidewalks of a street, these activities, help to entice people to use the street. If it does not attract social life and the sharing the street edge, the street functions as a transmit channel. Moreover, the activities generated by people help to promote street life, where people can be seen as magnetic points to attract others. As such, Jacobs [31] alludes that, "the sight of people attracts still other people … people's love of watching activity and other people is constantly evident in cities everywhere."

According to Jacobs [31], the primary mixed uses must be concurrently active with diversity. Effectiveness depends foremost on people who tend to use spaces for different purposes and reasons. However, efficiency, according to Jacobs [31] means, "that the people using the streets at different times must actually use the same street [including] among them, people who will use some of the same facilities. All kinds of people can be presented [and] the mixture of people on a street at one time of day must bear some reasonably proportionate relationship to people there at other times of day." Engwicht [5] defines the street according to aspects that have been ignored,

*Perspective Chapter: A Conceptualization of Measuring People's Activity in Sustaining Urban Life DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108901*

and particularly in consideration of modern thought. Therefore, street reclaiming means, "[an] exchange space —an outdoor living room for social, cultural, and economic exchange, [and] as a place for the adult and those on the margin of society to share their street wisdom, [also] the street for adult play: people-watching, promenading, water, art celebration, festivals, eating, or just hanging out, [and] as the stage upon which those at the margin of society can make a contribution to community life. A vibrant street life is essential for any egalitarian, democratic society to a healthy political process" ([5], pp. 17–54).

#### **3.3 Staying versus moving**

People's activities regarding the street milieu can be classified into two trends, namely: *through street-based movement* and *to street-based movement*, including those who are staying and moving. The reciprocal role between staying and moving relates to the pedestrian flow and the street edge, which governs the level of stopping or walking. Movement is a crucial key to expressing a dynamic street. Carmona et al. [43] state that, "movement is fundamental to understanding how places function. Pedestrian flows through public space are both at the heart of the urban experience and important in generating life and activity … most shops, for example, are not a sufficient magnet and have to be well-located with respect to the existing movement patterns. The land-use activity merely reinforces/multiplies the basic movement."

The opportunity for people to be able to stay or move in a space correlates to the space's characteristics one of which is intervisibility and permeability through-in space. This is what Hillier [55] calls the strategic value of isovist when he argues that this makes intuitive sense because, if the primary activity of those who stay in public spaces is people-watching, then "… strategic spaces with areas close to—but not actually lying on—the main lines of movement are optimal." For this reason, Jacobs [31] states that, "a city's collection of opportunities of all kinds, and the fluidity with which these opportunities and choices can be used, is an asset—not a detriment—for encouraging city— neighborhood stability." The street edge is responsible, to a large extent, for generating the three main (and their oppositional) human activities. The street edge grants the opportunity for those who belong to a different gender, age, and cluster to use the street for different purposes and activities. Hence, the value of the street is not limited to only vehicular movement but offers a broad spectrum of opportunities for people to advantageously use the street.

## **4. Conceptual framework of quantifying human activities**

In this chapter, the idea of extracting conceptual layout in quantifying different patterns of activity could play a significant role in examining human behavior. Moreover, the street edge as an independent factor also contributes substantially to forming peoples' responses. Gehl [3] states that the dramatic evolution that markedly changed the atmosphere of cities, public spaces, and public life in the twentieth century, was the influx of motor cars in substantial numbers. He also states that the "city space continued to function as important social meeting place in the twentieth century, until the planning ideals of modernism prevailed and coincided with the car invasion" ([11], p. 25). However, modernism carried a new perspective of scale and proportion based on its ideal thoughts, which stand away from what people perceive in order to their desires and aspirations with meaningful and comfortable [7].

#### *Sustainable Regional Planning*

The scale can be divided into two levels: the scale of the urban context in the city and the scale of buildings in the city. The other dramatic changes in reading the city are that the city has become a milieu for cars rather than people, and the destruction of the human scale of the city in terms of high-rise buildings and wide roads with larger open spaces, which are far from a human scale and tend to be antipedestrianism [56].

In this chapter, the ethnographic technique is an investigation that can be adopted through the observation of people's behavior throughout the streets. Ethnography examines how persons behave in a space without any direct connection to them; this is achieved by conducting a direct field observation. To collect data from the field, synchronically, the need is to record pedestrian flow, non-pedestrian flow in motorized (cars, vehicles, motorcycles, etc.) spaces, and nonmotorized flow (bikes and human-powered cart). They also recorded other observed activities. The observation could be functioned for different time per day, such as morning, noon and afternoon, and during weekdays and weekends, when each recording period covered approximately an efficient interval. Furthermore, this meant coexisting with street life and people in the field study. Two fundamental types of movement occur in the street: pedestrian flow and vehicular movement as non-pedestrian flow. The first sort is classified according to kind, amount, and proximity. The kind considered the gender and age of people, and the volume, which calculated the number of pedestrians. The proximity referred to the grouping of pedestrians (**Figure 6**).

The conceptual framework is to evaluate the street edge and the extent to which the edge, with its embodied activities, attracts people. In addition, this captured the age and gender of people and how they behaved; for example, whether they walked and stayed, or were alone or in a group. The level of pedestrian flow through the street and how people respond to both the private and public edge is a crucial question for the nature of the street life. Similarly, the physiognomies of the street edge play a key role in formulating people's behavior and in controlling the interrelationship between both the human-edge interface and the human-human interface. Concerning non-pedestrian (vehicular) movement can be considered one of the leading issues in studying a street network, particularly where most of the street is designated for vehicular-based standards rather than human-based dimensions.

The conceptual framework includes two main sections: pedestrian movement and non-pedestrian stream. The former covers three categories, namely: group, volume, and kind each one deals with a specific demand of data. A group pattern represents the number of individuals to be grouped and how the different groups are scattered across the street, and the diversity of these clustering(s) in terms of members who belong to them. A volume pattern refers to the number of persons who move-to and movethrough in a certain segment of the street. In this chart, a kind pattern illustrates two classes: gender and age, where the people are symbolized into male and female. Also, the kind pattern embraces another division, that is age pattern, where the individuals can be labeled into three different ages: child, teenager (young), and adult (elder) people. The second part of the classification allocates for the non-pedestrian flow, in this class, there are three lists: nonmotorized, hybrid, and motorized. The nonmotorized flow deals with two items: bike and human-powered cart, and hybrid class contains motorcycles, vehicles, and other, besides, motorized alike (**Figure 6**).

In this flowchart of classification, on the furthest right of the diagram, a column illustrates the levels of information in relation to each row of the conceptual framework. The level of interfacing is for a human-human interface meaning that the relationship between people themselves across the street life. A scope is a domain of dealing with a certain range of street segment observation such as these levels as micro, *Perspective Chapter: A Conceptualization of Measuring People's Activity in Sustaining Urban Life DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108901*

#### **Figure 6.**

*A Conceptual framework of the movement in the street into two main flows: Pedestrian flow and Non-pedestrian movement. Source: Drawn by the author.*

macro, local, and global scale in measuring different activities. A focus indicates the chosen sample of this framework and that is people who would be observed and experienced in street life. Following, the levels that link the different rows of the flowchart are flexible and expandable concerning the circumstance of each case separately. The variables that were listed through the conceptual framework, these variables were interpreted thoroughly before and then giving the definition for each one. A scale is an indicator to define the scope of each variable in studying street life, for instance, street segment scale, block scale, and neighborhood scale. A layer of information, in the flowchart, is an important scheme that helps to deal with specific data and input evidence and materials that would be invested and employed in a study (**Figure 6**).

Mapping individuals' behavior through the street life and how people meet each other for different purposes, such as walking, chatting, sitting, and sharing an event, this procedure entails a spectrum of plans and scenarios. For example, the conceptual framework and its variables and indicators would be a research process map in order to draw the layout of future studies regarding urban life, street life, and social interaction. Raising the appeals toward the sustainability of urban life and street knowledge against minimizing the car-based street has become a more essential need. The street is an active ambience that grants various possibilities for people who come and

utilize such different urban space as the street. This conceptual framework has been designed to deal with people within the surrounding environment. Additional details of examining the physical settings of the adjacent street edges require more concentration on the anatomical characteristics of such street edges.

## **5. Conclusion**

This chapter was an attempt to draw the main layout of different patterns of activities that could perform in an urban street setting. In this sense, the street edge promotes how individuals might respond to the surrounding environment differently. Three significant actions could be reflected in people's behavior when they move through the street: necessary, individual, and staying; moreover, their opposite actions are: optional, social, and moving. This chapter highlighted the meaning of these activities, and it provided the conceptual framework through projecting its vocabularies on the street observation. Human activities and how people behave are not independent phenomena within the urban context; however, one can recognize the level of the relationship between those who use the street and the street itself. The spatial configuration of the urban form and the street's characteristics are ranked most important in affecting the individual's response to the built environment.

However, creating an obvious border of human activity is not straightforward, and it is challenging for the observer to distinguish people's movement and their intent and purpose. Therefore, the outlines and presents findings from the ethnography technique, namely, to record human movement and behavior is a methodical technique. Nevertheless, the direct observations of, and coexistence with, people in the observed streets and the capturing of notes are more significant and helped to enrich future studies. The classification of different activities that could be observed and experienced in a street space contributes, to a large extent, to diagnose the different abilities of people's responses and reactions. The conceptual framework chart granted a new vision of a research map that would employ in order to study street life.

The main variables and indicators included in the conceptual framework would support capturing the fine characteristics of the varied reactions that could come from those who experience street life and different social interactions. The ability of resilience of the conceptual framework is not limited to what has been done, but instead, the outline of these variables is open for more progress procedures. Finally, the reliability and validity of such a conceptual framework are needed meaning that future research could seek to apply this framework in order to get the level of proof of the variables and how that could be interpreted and explained the findings, and in turn, promote and update the current and new variables and indicators. However, the chapter had been focused on the activity pattern and, theoretically, apart from the built environment as an independent factor. For this reason, there is an opportunity to give more attention to the physical setting and the different levels of urban scales, such as micro, macro, and local and global levels.

*Perspective Chapter: A Conceptualization of Measuring People's Activity in Sustaining Urban Life DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108901*

## **Author details**

Haider Jasim Essa Al-Saaidy Department of Architectural Engineering, University of Technology-Iraq, Baghdad, Iraq

\*Address all correspondence to: haider.j.essa@uotechnology.edu.iq

© 2022 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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## **Chapter 12**
