Study of urban street attributes that support widely accepted livability characteristics with special reference to Sri Lanka

Abstract

During the recent years of the modern era, streets within cities are being designed giving prominence to commuters’ expectations ,as a result by now a high number of street design manuals had already been developed to accommodate human expectations and behaviors, thus encouraging the movement of pedestrians, cyclists and public transportation. Preparing these manuals show the widespread paradigm shift in terms of City Street designs [ITDP, 2011, City of Sydney council, 2013, WHO, 2015]. In other words, the prevailing belief that the street is just a channel for vehicular movement is no longer an accepted phenomenon. In the context of Sri Lankan city roads conventionally designs are being carried out giving prominence to motorized vehicular functionality, hence under these circumstances a need has arisen to investigate reasons why road designers’ perceiving process had not recognized this need. This study considered two cases to assess to what extent world widely accepted livable street attributes currently being incorporated in Sri Lankan city streets. Out of the twelve livable street attributes considered, for the pilot study it was revealed only few attributes had been included in the current practices, yet these provisions compared with corresponding world widely accepted attributes concluded, that there exist a knowledge gap, which our planning and design practitioners had not yet realized. Study further warranted the need to characterize and introduce new livable street attributes, not yet in practice in Sri Lankan city streets. The “ Collected Memory Mapping Approach “ was adopted to identify commuter perception and expectations with particular reference to Sri Lanka. One main objective of this research study was to acquire the knowledge gap needed to qualify street attributes as livable attributes with particular reference to Sri Lankan context. Next objective was to ascertain to what extent world widely accepted livable street attributes are adopted or integrated in to the current Sri Lankan urban street design practices by studying two case studies. Characterization and introduction of new livability attributes not yet practiced in Sri Lanka were acquired through the “ collected Memory mapping approach”. Eventually this research study introduces a paradigm shift to the conventional “ design vehicle concept by bringing forth “ design User ’ concept for establishing geometric attributes in planning and designing city streets.