Human-oriented Space Of Urban Roads

The paper mainly discusses concept, elements, features and construction practices ofhumanized space environment of urban road. Space environment of urban roads is closelyrelated to construction of road ontology, but pays more attention to the visual appearance ofthe road and its space combined relations. Humanized road space also requires basing onhumanistic thought, so that the space environment has human scale to meet the pedestrianphysiological requirements, psychological and behavioral characteristics, in order to betterserve pedestrians.The research method is different from other papers of road landscape. Most papers focuson landscape, while ignoring viewing experience, this easily leads to the mismatch betweenlandscape and experience. This paper studies landscape on the basis of viewing experience,emphasizing the combination of landscape and experience, so that landscape will better servethe road users (i.e. the viewers). In addition, this paper is not limited to road landscape, butalso basing on the road users (especially pedestrians) physiological requirements,psychological and behavioral characteristics, studies measures of creating humanized roadspace environment, such as resting space, identification system for pedestrians.The author reviews the development process of urban roads in our country afterliberation, points out that urban roads are in the initial stage of the human-oriented design.The author also analyzes the common drawbacks of urban roads: only attach importance tothe capacity of the motor vehicle and related engineering technology, rather than on physicaland psychological needs of pedestrians; plagiarism is serious, losing individuality. Thesephenomena come from the car-oriented designing concepts and psychology of politicalperformance projects. By reflecting City Beautiful Movement of domestic and foreign cities,put forward that design and construction of urban roads should be based on humanisticthought.Urban road space is part of urban external space, and the main way of displaying urbanlandscape. The object of urban design is external space, focusing on the building outsideinterface style and harmonization between each other; urban road space is a linear open spacefocusing on the shuttling experience of road users. The three elements of the urban road spaceare: road space, off-road space, and human activities. The six characteristics of the urban roadspace are: linear and open, spatial systemic, multiple components, diversity of buildingowners, human scale and auto scale, human activities is the most attractive element in the visual environment. Human scale requires that urban road space should meet thephysiological requirements and the psychological and behavioral characteristics ofpedestrians. Human activity is the embodiment of the road charm, we must create excellentspace environment, diversify road landscape, cultivate human activity.To create a humanized space environment, you must first understand the physical,psychological and behavioral characteristics of the pedestrian. The paper elaborates thecharacteristics of human perception and vision, introduces the concept of visual energy andvisual balance. The pedestrians have five psychological characteristics: need for security,need for sociality, need for attribution, desire for communication with natural and historicalidentity, these psychological characteristics provide direct design basis to design of urbanroad space. Pedestrian behavior characteristics are: slow walking velocity, short sustainedwalking time, and different velocity between pedestrians, specific interaction distance,requirements of areas and objects to relying on. The paper discusses the process of activityeffects, points out that human activities are the most attractive factor, and performance ofcharismatic roads.According to the physical, psychological and behavioral characteristics of pedestrians,humanized urban road space should have some condition. Pedestrians can continue to walk ashort distance, so we should reasonably arrange resting facilities and crossing facilities. Theother basic physical needs must be met, so we should arrange the purchase and sale offacilities, drinking fountains, public toilets. Security need requires a non-slip, sufficient widthpedestrian space, with adequate social surveillance and good recognizability. Need forattribution requires urban roads reflect local features or local history and culture, so that thepublic will be proud of them. Communication with natural requires take full advantage of thevisual resources along the road, and set resting facilities in the beautiful scenery. Need forsociality request beautiful environment to nurture human activities, and should pay attentionto the layout of open space, and seats position to promote interaction between pedestrians.Historical identification require road space express some historical elements to arousepeople’s sympathy.Humanized road space environment is a new request of road construction, so the paperintroduces the concept of pedestrian service level and urban linear park; testing design bypedestrian experience, instead of renderings. In order to create safe and comfortable place,the sidewalk should be sufficient wide and devised of different functional areas; active use oftrees shade; giving full play to the monitoring role of drivers, pedestrians and residents alongthe road. In order to create pleasant space, we can make layering by sidewalk of height difference, rising or sinking the resting space; when the space is too large, we can usedifferent paving pattern or tree to subdivide space; tall trees imply a height direction of thespace; the monotony of the sidewalk or channel can be eliminated by creating rhythm, steepslope can be modified by turning.To improve the visual environment, we should analyze the surrounding environment,coordinate road style with the surrounding environment; keep the road landscape unified anddiversified; manage the off-road l visual resources by approaching, exposing, connection orbypassing, occluding, transforming; analyze visual energy, keep the visual balance. Bysetting up road name signs, strengthening road characteristics, improving pedestrianrecognizing system and optimizing road network structure, we can improve therecognizability of urban roads. Individuality of roads can be created by reflecting localcharacteristics, historical context and the other personalized creation. Resting space should bearranged in the crowded sections, transport nodes and beautiful scenery sections; they can beplanar, rising or falling type; appropriate enclosing method can be chose according tosituation. Rationally arrange the purchase and sale of facilities, drinking fountains, publictoilets and other pedestrian amenities. Create commutation space by creating more border,rational arrangement of seats, reserving activity places; foster human activities by publicizingscientific knowledge, regulations and policies, and artistic culture.To correctly understand the degree of road space humanity, we must have a scientificevaluation. It is necessary to find a suitable evaluation method among various evaluationmethods. Evaluation on the degree of humanity of the road space is usually not a definitevalue, but a fuzzy judgment; and the evaluation indexes are multileveled, so we choose theFuzzy Hierarchy Comprehensive Evaluation method to evaluate the urban road humane space.By analyzing and leveling the indexes of the humane aspects of road space, we set up theindex system with structured levels; use AHP to determine the weight of different factors ofeach (sub) criterion layers; establish reviews grade domain: very good, good, general, bad,very bad; construct fuzzy evaluation matrix due to each sub-criteria, and then do the fuzzyevaluation gradually. In this paper, this evaluation method is used to evaluate the humaneaspect of Daguang Road, and to analyze the success and failure in roads reconstructionwelcoming the Guangzhou Asian Games.By two engineering case: Road East to Liede River in TianHeBei of Guangzhou andTokyo’s Ginza commercial streets, explain the concept that urban roads can be constructed as urban linear park, and humanistic thought, human scale in space environment of road.Finally, this paper narrates the design process of the urban road space environment.