Table Of ContentMeasuring
Urban Design
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Measuring Urban Design
Metropolitan Planning + Design
Series editors: Arthur C. Nelson and Reid Ewing
A collaboration between Island Press and the University of
Utah’s Department of City & Metropolitan Planning, this
series provides a set of tools for students and professionals
working to make our cities and metropolitan areas more
sustainable, livable, prosperous, resilient, and equitable. As
the world’s population grows to nine billion by mid-century,
the population of the US will rise to one-half billion. Along
the way, the physical landscape will be transformed. Indeed,
two-thirds of the built environment in the US at mid-century
will be constructed between now and then, presenting a
monumental opportunity to reshape the places we live. The
Metropolitan Planning + Design series presents an integrated
approach to addressing this challenge, involving the fields of
planning, architecture, landscape architecture, urban design,
public policy, environmental studies, geography, and civil
and environmental engineering. The series draws from the
expertise of some of the world’s leading scholars in the field
of Metropolitan Planning + Design.
Please see Islandpress.org/Utah/ for more information.
Other books in the series:
The TDR Handbook, Arthur C. Nelson, Rick Pruetz, and
Doug Woodruff (2011)
Stewardship of the Built Environment, Robert Young (2012)
Governance and Equity, Marc Brenman and Thomas W.
Sanchez (2012)
Good Urbanism: Six Steps to Creating Prosperous Places,
Nan Ellin (2012)
Measuring
Urban Design
Metrics for Livable Places
Reid Ewing & Otto Clemente
with
Kathryn M. Neckerman
Marnie Purciel-Hill
James W. Quinn
Andrew Rundle
Washington | Covelo | London
Copyright © 2013 Reid Ewing and Otto Clemente
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher:
Island Press, 2000 M St. NW Suite 650, Washington, DC 20036
ISlAND PRESS is a trademark of The Center for Resource Economics.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ewing, Reid H.
Measuring urban design : metrics for livable places / Reid Ewing and Otto Clemente with Kathryn M.
Neckerman, Marnie Purciel-Hill, James W. Quinn, Andrew Rundle.
pages cm
Summary: “What makes strolling down a particular street enjoyable? The authors of Measuring Urban
Design argue it’s not an idle question. Inviting streets are the centerpiece of thriving, sustainable com-
munities, but it can be difficult to pinpoint the precise design elements that make an area appealing. This
accessible guide removes the mystery, providing clear methods to assess urban design. The book provides
operational definitions and measurement protocols of five intangible qualities of urban design, specifically:
imageability, visual enclosure, human scale, transparency, and complexity. The result is a reliable field
survey instrument grounded in constructs from architecture, urban design, and planning. Readers will also
find illustrated, step-by-step instructions to use the instrument and a scoring sheet for easy calculation of
urban design quality scores”--Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-61091-193-1 (hardback)
ISBN-10: 1-61091-193-8 (cloth)
ISBN-13: 978-1-61091-194-8 (paper)
1. City planning--Social aspects. 2. Architecture--Human factors. 3. City planning--Methodology.
I. Clemente, Otto. II. Title.
NA9053.H76E95 2013
711’.4—dc23
Printed on recycled, acid-free paper
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Key Words: Columbia’s Built Environment and Health (BEH) group, complexity, human scale, D
variables, imageability, Maryland Inventory of Urban Design Qualities (MIUDQ) protocol, legibility,
linkage, perceptual qualities, Robert Wood Johnson Active living Research (AlR), sidewalk connection,
tidiness, transparency, visual enclosure, visual preference survey
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
one Introduction 1
Why You Should Read This Book 3
Initial Screening of Qualities 3
Map of the Book 22
two Data Collection 25
Expert Panel 25
Videotaping 26
library of Video Clips and Sample 28
Visual Assessment Survey 31
three Analysis and Final Steps 35
Walkability in Relation to Urban Design Qualities 35
Inter-Rater Reliability of Scene Ratings 37
Analyzing the Content of Sampled Scenes 38
Inter-Rater Reliability of Content Analysis 39
Urban Design Ratings in Relation to Physical Features 39
Cross-Classified Random Effects Models 43
Results of Statistical Analysis 46
Final Steps 54
four Urban Design Qualities for New York City 63
Kathryn M. Neckerman, Marnie Purciel-Hill,
James W. Quinn, and Andrew Rundle
Background 64
Neighborhood Characteristics and Urban Design 65
viii Contents
Methods 68
Results 72
New Strategies for Measuring Urban Design 78
Conclusions 81
five Validation of Measures 83
Data 83
Measures 84
D Variables 88
Analysis 91
Results 93
Discussion 96
six Field Manual 99
Getting Started 99
Urban Design Quality Definitions 102
Measurement Instructions 104
Appendix 1: Biosketches of Expert Panel Members 137
Appendix 2: Operational Definitions of Physical Features 140
Appendix 3: Urban Design Qualities and Physical Features 158
Appendix 4: Scoring Sheet Measuring Urban Design Qualities 163
References 167
Index 175
Acknowledgments
This book is the result of an interdisciplinary, inter-university collaboration.
Susan Handy, a professor of environmental policy at UC Davis, and Ross
Brownson, an epidemiologist at Washington University in St. louis, were
full partners in the original study funded under the Robert Wood Johnson’s
Active living Research Program, Round 1, Identifying and Measuring En-
vironmental Determinants of Physical Activity (grant # 50337). Susan is a
leading researcher on the relationship between land use and travel. She has
done seminal research on the factors that affect walking. Ross is regarded as
one of the leaders in the field of evidence-based public health. He co-directs
the Prevention Research Center in St. louis—a major, CDC funded center
jointly led by Washington University and Saint louis University. Susan and
I co-authored the article upon which Chapter 1 is based: “Measuring the Un-
measurable: Measuring the Unmeasurable: Urban Design Qualities Related
to Walkability.” Ross and Susan participated in all phases of the AlR project
as described in Chapters 2 and 3.
Additional collaborators include Kathy Neckerman and Andrew Run-
dle’s team at Columbia University, whose research is described in Chapter
4. They too were funded under the Active living Research Program of the
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (grant #58089). Kathy is a sociologist at
the Columbia Population Research Center and Andrew is an epidemiologist
at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. They co-direct the Built En-
vironment and Health (BEH) research group at Columbia and have written
extensively about disparities in neighborhood conditions and their implica-
tions for health and wellbeing.
The validation exercise in Chapter 5 involved several students and staff at
the University of Utah: Mark Connors, Amir Hajrasouliha, Shima Hamidi,
and J.P. Goates. J.P. generated GIS measures for buffers around the 588
sampled street segments in New York City. Mark, Amir, and Shima counted
ix
x Acknowledgments
pedestrians in street-level imagery and comparing these counts to the man-
ual counts.
The team at Island Press who took this book to publication includes senior
editor Heather Boyer, associate editor Courtney lix, and senior production
editor Sharis Simonian. Their professionalism is evident in the final product.
To all of the above, we say thanks.
Reid Ewing and Otto Clemente
