Human scale urban form

The “human-scale” refers to a delicate level of fine granularity at which people interact with their surroundings with innate physiological, cognitive, and perceptual apparatus; “human-scale urban form” is the morphology of urban socio-ecological systems (SES) that not only serves people’s immediate needs for life, work, and spirituality, but is also tangible and directly appreciable by people in their daily lives; the performance of human-scale urban form is the manner in which and theefficiency with which urban form fulfils its intended purpose(s). As such, insights into how people interact, intentionally or otherwise, with a great variety of human-scale urban forms, and how and why people feel about if and to what extent their needs are met are valuable and informative pieces of knowledge to the contemporary practice of urban planning and design.

With the advancement in human understanding of urban landscape, and the development in data science and technology, it is now possible to measure at a high level of precision both human-scale urban form and its performance, and further explore ways in which these new understandings improve human practice in SES and enhance urban form performance at the human-scale.

The new normal era witnesses the policy shifting from growth planning to quality management. It is in urgent need to carry out the scientific assessment and quantitative research on the built environment. As street is an important public domain, its quality and vitality become one of the major research directions. Focusing on street space, this paper analyzes the existing quantitative approaches of street space in China and abroad from three aspects: the concept of street space quality, the large-scale quantification method, and the measurement method of street space quality. In conclusion, there are a number of measurement approaches for physical street space in various aspects, but the integrated application of the approaches is limited. It is a new research direction in the world to use street view pictures with high availability to conduct street space measurement. The influencing mechanism of the quality and vitality of street space still requires in-depth research, and the discussion about scientific research-based street planning and design methods is lacked in existing studies.

Although it is widely known that quality of street space plays a vital role in promoting urban vibrancy, there is still no consensus on how to quantitatively measure it for a large scale. Recent emerging dataset Street View Picture has revealed the possibility to overcome the previous limit, thus bringing forward a research paradigm shift. Taking this advantage, this paper explores a new approach for visual quality evaluation and variation identification of street space for a large area. Hutongs, which typically represent for historical street space in Beijing, are selected for empirical study. In the experimental part, we capture multi-years Tencent Street View Picture covering all the Hutongs, and conduct both physical and perceived visual quality evaluation. The physical visual quality of street space is achieved automatically by combining 3-dimensional composition calculation of greenery, openness, enclosure using machine-learning segmentation method SegNet, and 2-dimensional analysis of street wall continuity and cross-sectional proportion; perceived visual quality of street space is evaluated by stay willingness scoring from five aspects. The variation of quality is evaluated based on the identified physical space variations. The result indicates that visual quality of Hutongs are not satisfied, while some regeneration projects in the historical protection block is better. Most Hutongs are in shortage of visual green, relative more continuous but with low cross-sectional ratio. Hutongs near main road witness an increasing trend of motorization. The difference between physical and perceived quality indicates the feasibility and limitation of the auto-calculation method. In the most recent 3–4 years, less than 2.5% Hutongs are improved, which are mainly slow beautification.

The journal Landscape and Urban Planning (LAND) solicits contributions for a Special Issue to be published in 2018 on “Measuring human-scale urban form and its performance”.

The “human-scale” refers to a delicate level of fine granularity at which people interact with their surroundings with innate physiological, cognitive, and perceptual apparatus; “human-scale urban form” is the morphology of urban socio-ecological systems (SES) that not only serves people’s immediate needs for life, work, and spirituality, but is also tangible and directly appreciable by people in their daily lives; the performance of human-scale urban form is the manner in which and theefficiency with which urban form fulfils its intended purpose(s). As such, insights into how people interact, intentionally or otherwise, with a great variety of human-scale urban forms, and how and why people feel about if and to what extent their needs are met are valuable and informative pieces of knowledge to the contemporary practice of urban planning and design.

With the advancement in human understanding of urban landscape, and the development in data science and technology, it is now possible to measure at a high level of precision both human-scale urban form and its performance, and further explore ways in which these new understandings improve human practice in SES and enhance urban form performance at the human-scale.

Through this Special Issue, the guest editors aim to make a compelling case for an emerging and promising research direction of measuring the “unmeasurable” human-scale urban form and performance. We welcome contributions by scholars and practitioners from around the world that focus on one or any combination of the following themes.

(1) Approaches to measuring human-scale urban forms; (2) The social, economic, environmental performances of human-scale urban forms; (3) The interrelationships between urban form and its performance; and (4) Making knowledge about human-scale urban forms and their performances usable, useful, and efficacious in planning and design practice. Research question contributions may address/ include, but are definitely not limited to:

• How can we identify the human-scale features of urban form and related performance by applying new data environment and new analytical methods?
• How can we quantitatively measure and model these features and related performance with geo-spatial tools?
• Is it possible to generate an in-depth understanding of the underlying relationships between urban form and its performance? How can we promote better place-making based on these insights?

Contacts (already finished):

Please send any inquiries and your abstract/ manuscript by the above deadlines to the co-guest editors:

Ying Long, School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. E-Mail: ylong@tsinghua.edu.cn

Yu Ye, College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University, Shanghai, China. Email: yye.tongji@gmail.com

The human-centered perspective has been frequently mentioned in many national policies on urbanization in China, like National Guidelines for Developing a New Type of Urbanization and Central Urban Work Conference. Accompanying with the raising call for human-centered considerations in urban planning and design, a series of new data environment and new analytical methods bring new potentials for achieving this goal. For instance, the new data environment consisting of big data and open data helps provide foundation for in-depth studying of urban form and its related performances. New techniques and methods, e.g. Lidar imaging, virtual reality, eye-tracking, deep learning, big data mining and visualization, provide emerging insightful analytical approaches. Therefore, the paper proposes the conceptual framework of human-scale urban form that can be defined as visible, touchable, and appreciable urban form in people’s daily lives. It would be a meaningful supplement for classical urban morphology focusing on street blocks and parcels. Following this route, the paper firstly reviews existed studies related to the concept of human-scale urban form. Three essential issues of human-scale urban form, i.e., measurements, performances, and urban planning and design interventions, are then discussed to guide future researches. After that, several initial studies made by the authors are illustrated as empirical examples. In sum, the paper is an initial attempt to claim the concept framework of human-scale urban form and explore its potentials in urban planning and design practices. It might help promote the transition towards a more scientific planning and design paradigm, and finally contribute to better urban lives.

The quality of street space has a great influence on behavior, public health, so as to cultural of urban daily life. The improvement of street space is gaining increasing concern from the policy makers and urban designers, especially in China`s metropolitan. A comparative evaluation for quality of street space in central area of Beijing and Shanghai is done in this paper, within which five hundred streets are randomly selected. Street view images are collected for image segmentation, users subjective scoring evaluation. It is found that street in central area of Beijing has a worse quality compared to Shanghai. The quality of street has yet to be refined to improve.

Extensive evidence has revealed that street greenery, as a quality-of-life component, is important for oxygen production, pollutant absorption, and urban heat island effect mitigation. Determining how green our streets are has always been difficult given the time and money consumed using conventional methods. This study proposes an automatic method using an emerging online street-view service to address this issue. This method was used to analyze street greenery in the central areas (28.3 km2 each) of 245 major Chinese cities; this differs from previous studies, which have investigated small areas in a given city. Such a city-system-level study enabled us to detect potential universal laws governing street greenery as well as the impact factors. We collected over one million Tencent Street View pictures and calculated the green view index for each picture. We found the following rules: (1) longer streets in more economically developed and highly administrated cities tended to be greener; (2) cities in western China tend to have greener streets; and (3) the aggregated green view indices at the municipal level match with the approved National Garden Cities of China. These findings can prove useful for drafting more appropriate policies regarding planning and engineering practices for street greenery.

客座主编（栏目主持人）：

龙瀛，清华大学建筑学院，博士，副教授

李栋，北京清华同衡规划设计研究院，博士，技术创新中心副主任

在经历了30多年的经济高速增长和城市快速扩张后，中国经济步入了“新常态”，并确立了“新型城镇化”战略。习近平2013年在中央城镇化工作会议上的讲话中指出，“…，城市建成区越摊越大，就会摊出不可治愈的城市病，甚至将来会出现一些‘空城’、‘鬼城’。”，以及“城市规划要由扩张性规划逐步转向限定城市边界、优化空间结构的规划”，近期的中央城市工作会议和《中共中央国务院关于进一步加强城市规划建设管理工作的若干意见》又对此进行了强调。 另一方面，随着信息通讯技术的快速发展，城市研究可获取的新数据环境（大数据和开放数据）不论是在时空覆盖和考察粒度方面都有巨大的提升，为更精细地从物质空间和社会空间刻画城市空间提供了可能。

北京城市实验室（BCL）坚持定量城市研究的创立理念，持续组织交流新数据环境城市研究在理论与实践上的最新实践。在成功召开两届年会之后，刚刚结束的在清华同衡召开的第三届BCL年会（BCL2016）的主题进一步聚焦新数据、新方法和新技术对城市空间品质、城市活力的研究，强化以营造品质和活力为目的的城市规划设计的重要意义。

基于BCL2016年会的嘉宾发言并结合客座主编邀请，遴选出如下几位与城市品质和活力紧密相关的文章，作为专辑的主要构成（详见附件）。如有必要，后续还计划召开小型研讨会继续对专辑文章进行讨论，进而提高成果质量。

1 龙瀛，周垠，图片城市主义：人的尺度城市形态研究的新思路

Picture Urbanism: Understanding human scale urban form with the lens of geotagged pictures

在图片的可获得性日益提高和处理手段日益成熟的背景下，笔者认为图片是一种在近期将得到高度重视的城市数据源，是对已有多源城市数据的重要补充。为此本文提出了图片城市主义这一概念，认为其是基于体现客观世界和主观认知的大规模量化城市研究的一种方法论。本文首先对图片城市主义的内涵进行阐述，之后介绍了图片的若干来源，以及当前的分析与可视化工具，最后给出了图片城市主义在城市空间品质测度、街道绿化水平评价和城市意象分析等方面的研究案例。

龙灜，清华大学城市规划工学博士，清华大学建筑学院副研究员，北京城市实验室创建人与执行主任。他的研究方向是量化城市研究及其规划设计响应，近五年他在城乡规划相关领域的SSCI/SCI知名期刊发表论文25篇，2015年出版Springer英文专著《Geospatial Analysis to Support Urban Planning in Beijing》。他还作为主持人或研究骨干累计参加三十余项科研和规划设计项目，多次获得国家和省部级奖励。

2 唐婧娴，龙瀛，特大城市中心区街道空间品质的测度：以北京二三环和上海内环街道为例

Evaluation for quality of street space in central areas of mega-cities: A comparative analysis of Beijing and Shanghai

街道是城市公共活动的重要场所。街道空间品质影响着人的行为习惯、公共健康水平，城市文化的塑造。在人口密度极高的特大城市中心区，街道空间品质的改善提升业已成为规划设计领域的核心任务之一。为了能有效的测度和揭示当前特大城市中心区街道空间的品质状况，本文选取北京和上海为例开展对比研究，多维度测度两地街道空间的总体品质、品质变化特征。随机选取北京二三环之间与上海内环内各500个街道，采集相应点位的最新街景图像，对街道空间品质进行主客观评价。过程中综合了图像分割客观要素分析、使用者主观评价等方法。本文通过实验性研究发现，北京二三环的街道空间品质综合水平低于上海内环，围合性较差、尺度大、机动化程度高，北京的中心区街道空间环境品质还有待于精细化的改善。

唐婧娴，博士研究生，清华大学建筑学院城市规划系，本科毕业于天津大学，曾赴新加坡国立大学交换。近期关注方向为德国城市转型历史、文化空间战略。

3 储妍、茅明睿，数据如何驱动设计——以回龙观社区品质提升为例

How Data Drives Design: A Practical Case of the Quality Promotion in Huilongguan Community

开放数据和手机信令、互联网LBS、IC卡刷卡记录等大数据共同构成了城市规划的新数据环境，在规划行业开始出现了以“人迹地图”时空分析平台为代表的新数据平台为规划行业提供了基于新数据开展城市研究和规划设计的新数据资源和分析工具。笔者以“人迹地图”平台为基础，编写了以数据驱动规划的数据增强设计手册，通过多元指标计算工具，量化地进行前期分析、剖析问题，精准地提出对策，并进行实施后的评估和监测。基于数据增强设计手册的指导，笔者参与了“回龙观地区功能优化规划研究”这一城市更新类项目，利用LBS定位数据、IC卡刷卡记录以及微博语义、POI等其他各类数据，从交通出行、职住通勤、就业结构、空间特征、设施品质、人群活力、情感语义等角度对回龙观地区的空间品质和活力进行量化剖析，通过与望京的对比，分析回龙观在各方面存在各种程度的不足，并据此提出针对性的方案对策。

储妍，北京市城市规划设计研究院规划师，哥伦比亚大学城市规划硕士。主要研究方向为大数据在城市规划和治理中的应用、规划公众参与和规划新媒体的运营与实践，作为大数据应用负责人参与了 “回龙观地区功能优化规划研究”项目。

4 曹越皓，龙瀛，基于网络照片数据的城市意象研究——以中国24个主要城市为例

The Evaluation of City Image Based on Network Photos Data: A Practical Case of 24 Major Cities in China

城市意向作为个体或群体对城市的整体感知，对城市有着重要意义。随着城市意向研究和实践的推进，其内涵有了新的发展，城市意向不仅包括了空间要素，更应涵盖自然景观、文化生活等内容。与此同时，城市新数据的广泛应用为城市研究带来了全新的途径和视角，网络照片因其精度高、覆盖广、数量多、更新快、信息量大等特点，能直观地体现人们对城市的客观描述和主观认知。本研究基于网络照片数据提出城市意向研究模型，建构以意向要素构成、意向主导方向、意向特色度、意向相似度四个分析模块为核心的研究框架，以定量的方式综合认知城市意向。并利用YFCC-100M网络照片数据对中国24个主要城市的整体意向进行研究，发现各城市间意象要素构成结构趋同，大多数城市意象以物质要素为主要特色，非物质要素特色不明显；以标志建筑为主导意象的城市主要分布在中国东部区域，以公共空间、市民生活和自然景观为主导意象的城市主要分布在中国西部区域。进而提出对策，指导城市自身特色的塑造和意向要素的确定，并为下一步探索意向要素在城市内部空间的分布特征打好基础，以助于城市空间设计实践的推进。

曹越皓，博士研究生，重庆大学建筑城规学院。

5 陈泳、王全燕、奚文沁、毛婕，街区空间形态对居民通行步行的影响分析——以上海为例

Impact of block-level urban morphology on walkability of residents: A case study in Shanghai

步行不仅在短距离出行中占据重要地位，而且在大城市绿色交通体系构建过程中起着核心作用。本文以上海21个生活街区为案例，提取与居民步行通行活动相关的街区空间形态变量，通过SPSS相关性分析、基础模型模拟和预测模型建立3种方法探索街区建设环境变量对各类步行通行活动的影响，并结合散点图分析进行适宜值估算，最后从街区空间形态角度提出步行友好街区的优化建议。

陈泳，博士，同济大学建筑与城市规划学院教授、博士生导师。

编者按：龙瀛

编者自1998年求学在北京已有二十载，这个城市留给我最深刻印象的是它的街道、广场和公园绿地等公共空间，我的日常生活和城市记忆，如位于北京站前广场的清华大学接待站让下了火车初来北京的我时时回味，以及在南礼士路公园的多次午后散步邂逅那些熟悉的陌生人，多发生在北京的公共空间。它作为城市空间最为核心的要素之一，不仅承载了包括我在内的人们的生活与记忆，也是感受一座城市精神的重要场所。

一座城市公共空间的“好”与“坏”也经常为居民与游客津津乐道。最近的诸多会议和文件都明确提出要把提高城市公共空间品质提到日程上来，公共空间的品质直接关系到一个城市的规划建设和管理水平并影响着居民的生活质量，对其进行深入研究具有深刻意义。空间品质（quality of space）是反映城市人群对城市空间综合需求而形成的评价概念，其作为空间的总体质量，反映了城市空间各组成要素空间在“量”和“质”两方面，对城市人群和城市社会经济发展的适宜程度。空间品质的综合性带来了界定和测度的困难，已有研究多以质性研究为主。

在城市公共空间品质及其提升被不断重视的背景下，信息与通信技术（Information and Communication Technologies、ICT），还通过对人生活方式的改变，进而对城市公共空间带来了巨大的影响。在中国快速城市化与ICT技术迅速发展的交叉口，中国城市公共空间无论是物质空间还是所承载的城市生活都发生了巨大变化。

这样的背景对已有的相关研究发现提出了挑战，也对未来研究提供了新需求。当前涌现出的一系列新的数据环境、技术及方法提供了城市公共空间研究的新途径。例如，由大数据和开放数据构成的新数据环境为更好地从物质空间和社会空间刻画街道空间成为可能，雷达成像、脑电波、眼动仪、机器学习、大数据挖掘与可视化等先锋城市研究方法和技术也不断成熟。这些为街道物质空间的测度、空间品质与活力的评价以及影响机理研究提供了新的机遇。

在此背景下，本专辑旨在就基于新数据、新技术的城市公共空间品质提升研究这一主题进行多视角的初步探讨。本专辑在编者邀请的情况下，经过了经过遴选和评审，共九篇文章纳入本专辑。（1）同济大学的怀松垚、陈筝和刘颂首先为这一方向撰写了全面系统的综述文章；（2）清华大学的李智和龙瀛提出了利用多年的街景图片数据对街道空间品质变化进行探测的方法并用于了收缩城市齐齐哈尔；（3）华中科技大学的贺慧、陈艺和林小武则以武汉的两条商业街道为例，对影响街道公共空间品质的影响因素进行了识别；（4）厦门大学的张晶、李渊和王燕飞探讨了面向品质改善的街道空间设计的方法并用于了厦门鼓浪屿的福州路和鼓新路；（5）北京交通大学的刘星、盛强和杨振盛对利用街景地图这一新兴数据源分析街道空间活力的适用性进行了评估；（6）北京林业大学的刘祎绯和美国佐治亚理工学院的薛博文合作的文章则从声音景观视角对北京五道口片区的开放空间品质进行现状评估，并提出了设计优化思路；（7）北方工业大学的杨鑫、贺爽和卢薪升从热舒适性角度，基于软件模拟方法对北京白塔寺片区6条胡同的空间品质进行评测；（8）北京工业大学的熊文、阎伟标、刘璇和马瑞利用人本观测方法对北京历史街道进行了持续观测，进而提出了其空间品质的提升路径。

成稿后，2017年12月25日编辑部在清华大学建筑学院举行了同主题的主题沙龙，专辑部分作者参加了沙龙并进行了深入研讨，并根据研讨内容进行了必要的论文修改。下面也附上了主题沙龙大家的发言讨论。

Street space is the most fundamental aspect people perceive in urban space. Urban smellscape is one of the most important measurements for street quality. Nevertheless, most urban studies have overlooked smellscape for several reasons, one of which is that smell is difficult to record and analyse. This paper explores the possibility of combining smellwalking with social media data analysis for classifying city smells and mapping the smellscape of old Beijing which is later verified with semantic analysis of social media data. Besides, Houhai is selected as a case study area to show different layers of smells in a small scale and the influence smells have on places. Eventually, this paper discusses the possibility of employing smellscape in urban planning and design.

This paper probes into the micro-scale built environment of street in Beijing Wudaoying Hutong, covering the dimensions of street scale, transitional space between the street and buildings, floor space, façade of buildings, color and texture and contents of display. After identifying urban design features, the mechanism of impact of micro-scale built environment on halting behavior during walking is analyzed, which provides some implications on urban design guidelines of historical streets in Beijing.

In this study, we focus on the quality of street space which has attracted high attentions. We discover associations between the quality of street space and built environment attributes through an ordered logistic model using massive street view pictures (SVPs) and data on street location, form, function and attributes. Before ascertain which built environment factors influence the quality of street space, we checked the concordance of the experts’ scores, as well as correlations between different dimensions through Kappa analysis and drew the distribution map of street space quality. We found that the value of intersection over union is 85.61% for scoring the street space quality by different people. The spatial quality of more than 75% streets are in the middle level with no obvious polarisation observed in the central area of Qingdao. In addition, for street quality index, all variables are statistically significant. The sequence is as follows: near-line rate > D/H ratio > slope > length of street > distance to administrative center > POIs diversity. The D/H ratio, near-line rate, slope length of street, distance to administrative center and POIs diversity have various associations on every dimension of street quality. They can prove useful for drafting more appropriate policy measures aimed at improving street quality.

The spatial factors that affect urban vitality are complex and diverse. There is no consensus in existing studies, and there is a lack of summary and verification. Through systematic review and empirical research, the spatial factors affecting urban vitality are explored. Relevant empirical studies are searched and screened in Web of Science Core Collection. Common indicators representing urban vitality and spatial factors affecting urban vitality are summarized, including research scale, specific indicators, occurrence frequency, and Impact properties. The local empirical research takes the downtown area of Linyi as the research scope and the block as the research unit. It uses Weibo check-in data, POI (Point of Interest) data and night light data to measure the urban vitality, and measures 16 spatial factor indicators to establish an econometric model to analyze the correlation between spatial factors and urban vitality. The results show that the spatial factors affecting urban vitality are mainly divided into six categories: road traffic, block pattern, land use, architectural characteristics, accessibility and boundary vacuum. The convenience of transportation, the degree of land mixing and development intensity, and the relative location of research units are all important factors affecting urban vitality. The research results are helpful to understand the specific performance of vibrant urban space. It provides theoretical basis and practical reference for relevant research, and provides theoretical support and optimization direction for improving vitality oriented urban construction.