Street network connectivity towards pedestrian wayfinding in Teluk Intan Perak

Abstract

The connectivity within a street network is a major consideration in the planning and design of a town. The overall effectiveness of a town design by considering the human connection with urban space encourages street environments towards a smart and efficient urban lifestyle. However, the spatial connection of human behaviour in a street network is influenced by the design and planning of street designs, patterns, structures, and character of the town. Malaysian towns have experienced various developments of street network that were planned, not only by colonialist ideologies, but also by various governments that came after Malaysian independence 1957, as well as developers who include architects, landscape architects and urban planners. The mixed designs of a street network cause negative effects towards pedestrian wayfinding, attributable to poor urban design, confusion in streetscape identity, and new developments that lead to the change of familiar environments to become unfamiliar. Therefore, this research aims to develop a spatial evaluation of street network connectivity for effective wayfinding behaviour in a small town in Malaysia. The town of Teluk Intan, Perak was selected as the study site based on the street network structures, patterns, designs, and characters of a Malaysian small town. In developing the evaluation, a survey questionnaire was distributed to pedestrians (n = 200), and then analyzed using SPSS to determine the index of fifteen street features that influence pedestrian wayfinding in this predefined context. With the aid of ArcGIS, the index was applied to produce a spatial map. Following this, axial-line data, convex-space data, as well as solid and void data were elicited from land-use data and Google images. In identifying the impacts of spatial connection, the data were analyzed utilizing the space syntax analysis from Depthmap. Next, the spatial map of street features and the spatial connection map were overlapped and analyzed to determine the spatial connection for wayfinding. The results were validated by triangulation from behaviour mapping and interviews (n=30). It was thus found that the combination of familiar street features strongly improved pedestrians‟ ability to identify their locations, positions, and routes to the destination better than from a feature. Furthermore, spaces with visualization, movement, and interaction assist pedestrians to identify street features, and lead to an effective wayfinding process. These findings provide more fine-grained insights on street network connectivity of small towns in Malaysia, especially those which help to improve wayfinding. As such, the findings suggest that for a small town in Malaysia to be systematic and organized, it is important to conduct a spatial evaluation of street connectivity prior to and during the planning stage.