Education

Discovering how people discover Delft

Thousands of tourists descend on Delft each year. But how do they discover the city and what pedestrian routes do they follow? As part of an EU-funded project called ‘Spatial Metro’, TU Delft’s urbanism department organised a design workshop and ‘walkshop’ in Delft centre.

The aim: to better understand pedestrian movement patterns in urban environments and therefore improve the quality of the pedestrian experience for residents and tourists, alike.When you walk around in a city center for the first time, how do you find your way? Do you buy all kinds of tourist books and maps in advance, do you visit the tourist information center for help, do you follow the tourist sign system or simply let yourself get lost from time to time and ask people on the street for directions?

TU Delft’s Architecture Faculty’s department of urbanism is currently involved in an EU-funded project called ‘Spatial Metro’, which aims to improve way people find their way within city centers. If people can ‘read’ the city better, they will visit it more often, stay longer and . a pleasant side effect – spend more money. At least this is what many city marketers hope for.

The ‘Spatial Metro’ project has set itself the challenging task of improving city centres for pedestrians, in terms of navigation and way-finding. The mid-sized cities of Norwich and Bristol (UK), Rouen (France), Koblenz (Germany), and Biel (Switzerland), which all have historic downtowns, have teamed up with academic partners the University of East Anglia, Delft University of Technology, the University of Koblenz and the Swiss Pedestrian Association.

As one of the academic partners, TU Delft is playing a crucial role in providing background information for the research and then evaluating the interventions and investments of the project partners. Street interviews constitute one of the research methods: the researcher interviews the pedestrian-users and tries to discover the public spaces and environmental components they have utilized for orientation.

Pedestrians mention certain squares and streets, as well as nodes and landmarks or simply stores or areas that they frequent often in the course of daily activities, like shopping or sightseeing. The questionnaire research collects pedestrian-user responses and then proceeds to map the legibility conditions of city centers. This has proven to be a useful method for understanding urban areas, which ones work better than the others, and highlighting where improvements need to be made.

TU Delft has already organized field tests in the centers of Norwich and Rouen. Repetition of these field tests, both for extending the research samples and for collecting data in different seasons, must still be done. It’s expected that this will also result in the fine-tuning of mapping activities.
GPS

One of TU Delft’s main research aims is the integration of street interviews with electronic surveillance, such as Global Positioning System (GPS) tests and video observations. GPS – originally developed for use by the military – is now a commonly used system for pinpointing our locations anywhere on the globe. GPS works by acquiring a signal from orbiting satellites and generally makes all kinds of traveling much easier. With a GPS receiver, car drivers, pilots, ramblers and sailors can find out exactly where they are, plan their routes and receive help when lost.

GPS is now also being used in urban design research for tracking pedestrians and promises to offer a more precise and effective way for documenting and understanding the movement patterns of the pedestrian-users in urban environments. With this in mind, TU Delft organised a design workshop and a ‘walkshop’ . an excursion game . in the centre of Delft last month.

Participants in the excursion were members of the EU project from Norwich, Koblenz, Rouen, and Zurich, and are professionals in urban planning, graphic design and traffic engineering, as well as tourism policy-makers and information managers. They were all first-time visitors to Delft.

As part of the research, the participants were equipped with GPS devices and asked to discover the centre of Delft on foot. The GPS devices however were only used to track the participants; they were not used to support the navigation of the visitors.

The aim of the research was mapping the routes commonly used by tourists and understanding the readability level of the city center. To simulate random conditions, the participants were asked to enter the city from three different points: the NS railway station, Zuidpoort, and the Phoenixstraat car park.

As part of this three-hour walking game, these first-time visitors to Delft were given a list of places to be found and explored: from the Beestenmarkt to the Doelenplein, the Markt, Oude Delft, Prinsenhof, Old Church and Theatre Zuidpoort, to the Legermuseum and Molen. In addition, the participants were given the freedom to find their own places of discovery, to mark them using the GPS device they were supplied with and then add these new venues to the list of places supplied by the researchers.

When their explorations of Delft were completed, the participants were asked to draw their own mental maps of the city centre and to depict the routes they took in discovering Delft. From the mental maps collected, it was possible to conclude the points of reference and landmarks they used while navigating through Delft.

One interesting result in the route maps was that even those participants who thought they fully understood the layout of the city made mistakes, such as incorrectly locating the Markt square on their maps or mistakenly depicting their entry points into the city. In such cases, the route maps created with the help of GPS devices were helpful in correcting the data the participants submitted.

The GPS maps themselves of course are not capable of concluding the means of orientation people utilized or the reasons for their visits to the city. The interviews conducted with the participants did however produce some helpful and interesting reactions for Delft city planners to contemplate.

As one participant said, “Delft city center is quite easy to navigate. The simple grid system combined with the canal system helps the legibility of the historic centre. The landmarks are clearly identifiable and that helps to position yourself. But the signage on streets definitely needs to be improved, and finding the names on the buildings wasn’t easy.” The ‘Spatial Metro’ project runs until 2007.

(Photo: Sam Rentmeester/FMAX)

The aim: to better understand pedestrian movement patterns in urban environments and therefore improve the quality of the pedestrian experience for residents and tourists, alike.When you walk around in a city center for the first time, how do you find your way? Do you buy all kinds of tourist books and maps in advance, do you visit the tourist information center for help, do you follow the tourist sign system or simply let yourself get lost from time to time and ask people on the street for directions?

TU Delft’s Architecture Faculty’s department of urbanism is currently involved in an EU-funded project called ‘Spatial Metro’, which aims to improve way people find their way within city centers. If people can ‘read’ the city better, they will visit it more often, stay longer and . a pleasant side effect – spend more money. At least this is what many city marketers hope for.

The ‘Spatial Metro’ project has set itself the challenging task of improving city centres for pedestrians, in terms of navigation and way-finding. The mid-sized cities of Norwich and Bristol (UK), Rouen (France), Koblenz (Germany), and Biel (Switzerland), which all have historic downtowns, have teamed up with academic partners the University of East Anglia, Delft University of Technology, the University of Koblenz and the Swiss Pedestrian Association.

As one of the academic partners, TU Delft is playing a crucial role in providing background information for the research and then evaluating the interventions and investments of the project partners. Street interviews constitute one of the research methods: the researcher interviews the pedestrian-users and tries to discover the public spaces and environmental components they have utilized for orientation.

Pedestrians mention certain squares and streets, as well as nodes and landmarks or simply stores or areas that they frequent often in the course of daily activities, like shopping or sightseeing. The questionnaire research collects pedestrian-user responses and then proceeds to map the legibility conditions of city centers. This has proven to be a useful method for understanding urban areas, which ones work better than the others, and highlighting where improvements need to be made.

TU Delft has already organized field tests in the centers of Norwich and Rouen. Repetition of these field tests, both for extending the research samples and for collecting data in different seasons, must still be done. It’s expected that this will also result in the fine-tuning of mapping activities.
GPS

One of TU Delft’s main research aims is the integration of street interviews with electronic surveillance, such as Global Positioning System (GPS) tests and video observations. GPS – originally developed for use by the military – is now a commonly used system for pinpointing our locations anywhere on the globe. GPS works by acquiring a signal from orbiting satellites and generally makes all kinds of traveling much easier. With a GPS receiver, car drivers, pilots, ramblers and sailors can find out exactly where they are, plan their routes and receive help when lost.

GPS is now also being used in urban design research for tracking pedestrians and promises to offer a more precise and effective way for documenting and understanding the movement patterns of the pedestrian-users in urban environments. With this in mind, TU Delft organised a design workshop and a ‘walkshop’ . an excursion game . in the centre of Delft last month.

Participants in the excursion were members of the EU project from Norwich, Koblenz, Rouen, and Zurich, and are professionals in urban planning, graphic design and traffic engineering, as well as tourism policy-makers and information managers. They were all first-time visitors to Delft.

As part of the research, the participants were equipped with GPS devices and asked to discover the centre of Delft on foot. The GPS devices however were only used to track the participants; they were not used to support the navigation of the visitors.

The aim of the research was mapping the routes commonly used by tourists and understanding the readability level of the city center. To simulate random conditions, the participants were asked to enter the city from three different points: the NS railway station, Zuidpoort, and the Phoenixstraat car park.

As part of this three-hour walking game, these first-time visitors to Delft were given a list of places to be found and explored: from the Beestenmarkt to the Doelenplein, the Markt, Oude Delft, Prinsenhof, Old Church and Theatre Zuidpoort, to the Legermuseum and Molen. In addition, the participants were given the freedom to find their own places of discovery, to mark them using the GPS device they were supplied with and then add these new venues to the list of places supplied by the researchers.

When their explorations of Delft were completed, the participants were asked to draw their own mental maps of the city centre and to depict the routes they took in discovering Delft. From the mental maps collected, it was possible to conclude the points of reference and landmarks they used while navigating through Delft.

One interesting result in the route maps was that even those participants who thought they fully understood the layout of the city made mistakes, such as incorrectly locating the Markt square on their maps or mistakenly depicting their entry points into the city. In such cases, the route maps created with the help of GPS devices were helpful in correcting the data the participants submitted.

The GPS maps themselves of course are not capable of concluding the means of orientation people utilized or the reasons for their visits to the city. The interviews conducted with the participants did however produce some helpful and interesting reactions for Delft city planners to contemplate.

As one participant said, “Delft city center is quite easy to navigate. The simple grid system combined with the canal system helps the legibility of the historic centre. The landmarks are clearly identifiable and that helps to position yourself. But the signage on streets definitely needs to be improved, and finding the names on the buildings wasn’t easy.” The ‘Spatial Metro’ project runs until 2007.

(Photo: Sam Rentmeester/FMAX)

Editor Redactie

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