Understanding What People Do by Observing Their Ac- 123docz.net

This section encourages planners to use the skills and techniques developed and used outside of mainstream planning – drawing from the disciplines of architecture, urban design, and environmental psychology. Some planners may dismiss these approaches as “soft” or “without rigor”. Nothing could be further from the truth.

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5.4 Understanding What People Do by Observing Their Actions and Behaviors

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5.4.1 Behavior Maps

Architects and planners build spaces with a particular purpose in mind and are often surprised about the way they are then used. Ittleson et al. (1970) introduced us to the idea to literally follow the pathways of each individual entering an area of interest while taking note of what everybody is doing, how long they pause in front of or near what structure, and, not the least, how much interaction there is between each of the individuals observed.

The emphasis here is on observation; there is no interference with the individuals, no asking them why they are doing whatever they are doing. In a way, since we cannot presume to understand their behavior, the emphasis of behavior maps is more on the space and its elements. It is like observing the behavior of animated objects on a computer screen and trying to discern the rules according to which those objects move: speed, direction, number of turns, collision avoidance, as well as length of presence in the observed space, clustering/gathering, and interaction with elements of that space. Mere observations are sometimes sufficient to determine what environmental conditions act as connections and which ones serve as separators.

Behavior maps have been often used to help optimize the use of special environ- ments such as children playgrounds, nursing homes, museums, or transit hubs.

While the recording is still quite labor-intensive (for attempts to automate, see the following section), the analysis of such data has become a lot easier with the intro- duction of GIS in general and “space syntax” methods (Hillier and Hanson 1984;

Jiang and Claramunt 2002) in particular.

A special subset of behavioral maps is places and traces mapping (Zeisel 1984).

Any use of space leaves traces – be it footsteps, worn-out paths, discarded trash, etc.

A place that shows no sign of use signifies that it is not used, which in itself is significant.

Where the local environment does not meet the needs of their inhabitants, people adapt them. This may be in the form of moving (street) furniture or by changing their intended use (stairs become sitting places). Places that are frequented by the same people tend to change over the time of day. Whyte’s 1980 Social Life of Small Urban Spaces has not lost its relevance.

5.4.2 Sensors/Trackers

Increasingly, behavior maps can be created semiautomatically by handing subjects tracking devices that log people’s locations at regular time intervals. Each one of these devices records to what amounts to a space-time path as depicted in Fig. 5.1 (Họgerstrand 1970; Kwan 2004; Neutens et al. 2012). Multiple tracks can then be overlaid to determine opportunities for interaction or to get a sense of the use (crowdedness) of space at different times. The passive counterpart to such tracking

devices is static sensors that just record the number and speed of objects/people passing. These are commonly used in all kinds of traffic counts, from street intersec- tions to passengers at subway entrances.

5.4.3 Participant Observation

An extension of the behavioral techniques described above is to shadow consenting citizens during their daily routine. In addition to recording space and time, this very intensive method allows us to ask the participant why they are doing what they are doing. Only at this level (and the next), do we learn about the motivations and the reasoning process that causes people to use their environment in a particular way.

For example, if we see someone waiting for ẵ hour at a bus stop in winter, we might conclude that this person has no car; but the effect that this has on this person’s other daily spatiotemporal decisions cannot be discerned unless we follow them through- out the day and learn about their decision-making in context. In addition to the time spent in the field (in order to assure “representativeness,” a multitude of participants need to be observed on different days of the week and preferably in different sea- sons), transliteration, coding, and analysis of these observations require significant resources.

5.4.4 Ethnographic Research

The more time the observer spends in the field, the more her work approaches the realm of ethnographic research. The goal here is to experience life in the community by recording minutely all observations of everyone the researcher is encountering while living in the community. In anthropology, such studies are measured in years

Fig. 5.1 Space-time path

5.4 Understanding What People Do by Observing Their Actions and Behaviors

trying to immerse oneself to be part of the community. This is not realistic for planning purposes but can be approximated (a) by short-term multiple participant observation and (b) by encouraging members of the community to become active researchers. Participatory action research emphasizes this latter option, where the research/planning question is indigenous to the community and the traditional sepa- rations between the outside researcher (planner) and the community she serves are erased (e.g., Whyte, 1991)

Understanding What People Do by Observing Their Actions

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