A Study Of The Urban Street Intercourse Space Based On Environmental-behavior Studies

Urban streets have been the space for people’s outdoor intercourse since they came into being. Because the present development of the city streets is mainly to solve the serious traffic problem, the needs of the people walking on the streets are overlooked in design. Wide roads gradually replaced the space of the streets for people to walk, which resulted in the separation between the whole streets environment and people’s behavior. Nowadays, our pace of life becomes so fast that we have not enough time to communicate or breathe. We have lost the happiness we should have enjoyed in life. The old vivid pictures of street life disappear with the rapid development of the city. Without the feeling of safety and belonging, people more often quickly pass the streets with fewer and fewer people liking to stop. The interaction, feelings of exchange and humanity in life between people on the streets have been lost. Today, as the expression of feelings is more emphasized, people are more eager to return to the old rich social life on the streets. Therefore, it is necessary to design the streets according to people’s needs and build up a social intercourse space on the streets.Based on environmental-behavior studies, this thesis aims to build up the urban streets space for people’s needs. It will first find out the theoretical framework to support the study. Then, through investigating and analyzing the present situation of the needs of people’s behavior and the spatial cognition in the street space with the methods of practical investigation, observation, records and questionnaire, the elements of forming street space for social intercourse, function of satisfaction and principles of designing will be summed up. Finally, the author of the thesis puts forward some suggestions on the design of urban streets public space so as to awaken people’s attention to the improvement of the humanity in the streets, integrate human care with the urban development and thus to improve people’s life and their environment.The thesis includes four parts as follows:The first part is about the research subject, the urban street space. First, it analyzes the concept, the elements and the types of street space, including the traffic streets, living streets, commercial streets and complicated streets. Second, it discusses the connection between streets and people’s life and analyzes the development of the streets. Based on the three kinds of outdoor activities, it introduces the various street activities centered on people. It finally finds out the problems about the streets and gives solutions to them.The second part discusses the relevance between environment-behavior studies and the street interaction space. Firstly, it briefly states the implications of environmental-behavior studies and the street intercourse space and the basic characteristics of the intercourse space are also described. Secondly, by analyzing the feasibility studies of environment-behavior studies and the intercourse space, the thesis sums up the research levels of urban street interaction space environment based on environmental-behavior studies. The levels are the level of behavioral requirements and the level of spatial cognition which serve as the start for investigating, analyzing man’s psychological needs and the characteristics of spatial behavior and putting forward the importance of building up space image and place spirit of the intercourse space.The third part will analyze and summarize the above elements of street space environment. Starting from satisfying demands, the elements of space can be set from the traffic flow, the streets can stay facilities, space and space scale. Then meet the spatial cognition of street communication space elements were summarized, mainly from the street space interface, contour, color and historical and cultural aspects.The fourth part tells the function of street space such as pass to accommodate function, the function of recognition, the function of social intercourse and the function of inheriting the historical context. Then, based on the development of the urban street space, it puts forward the principles of designing, which include the principle of participation, the principle of variety, the principle of excitation energy, the principle of equality and open and the principle of sustainable development.In the end of the thesis, a conclusion is drawn. It also provides an outlook of the future of the urban street intercourse space environment development based on environment-behavior studies, points out its limitation and the outside force it will face.