Impact of urban morphology on pedestrians: A review of urban approaches

There are 127 million walking trips in the United States every day. For many years, urban planning has intentionally disregarded or remained unconscious about the needs of human beings as the rate of vehicle ownership in cities continues to increase. Thus, improving urban morphology to promote a better quality of life among pedestrians is necessary. The article provides an integration review between several urban approaches to answer the following questions: What are the factors affecting pedestrians? And How does urban morphology affect pedestrians? The study proposes three categories of factors, The study finds seven pedestrian responses related to the effect of urban morphology on pedestrians. The main contributions of this research study are (1) an integrative review of existing literature studying the interaction between pedestrians and urban morphology using social, spatial, visual, or climatic approaches and (2) a novel Factors/Responses model base on stimulus organism response theory the model integrates multiple approaches to identify urban morphology factors that affect pedestrians and find pedestrian responses to each of these factors. (3) Update a pedestrian needs model based on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. The novel model can be used to study the interaction between pedestrian and urban morphology to enhance pedestrian conditions.