Urban innovation through walkability and spatial cognition, Workshop
Walking is associated with many well-known personal, social and environmental benefits, especially in cities. Consequently, as environmental issues gain priority, much effort is now being directed towards making urban environments more pedestrian-friendly.
Walkability research deals with the extent to which the built environment facilitates or hinders walking for daily life purposes. The study of walkability has been fruitful and resulted in the identification of useful correlations of objective environmental characteristics (e.g., density, mix land use and accessible networks) and subjective aspects of environmental phenomena (e.g., fear of crime and road safety) that may have beneficial impacts on walking activity.
Since walking movement emerges out of complex interactions between people and their external environment, it is essential to refer also to spatial perception and cognition in order to establish more genuine knowledge. Thus, walkability research has begun to consider cognitive aspects that may have impact on walking behavior (e.g., the influence of cognitive distance on walking route choice). However, we still have very limited knowledge on how spatial cognition affects walkability, that is, how individual perception and cognition affect the subjective evaluation of walkability levels,
the experience of walking and walking behavior attributes.
This three-days international workshop sponsored by The Israeli Science foundation focused on questions about the way spatial cognition is involved in the relationship between walkability and walking behavior in cities. The workshop included discussions that aimed to elaborate on the existing knowledge gap in this topic. Discussions and presentations included references to theoretical and methodological issues as well as demonstrations of case studies from various places around the world. These discussions and presentations led to a collaborative effort of workshop’s participants to re-evaluate current frameworks regarding walkability in cities.
The workshop in Jerusalem
The second day of the workshop was hosted at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem by The Center for Urban Innovation. It included 20 leading international and local researchers in the field of walking behavior and walkability. As part of this day, state-of-the-art methods for studying walking behavior, including portable sensors and virtual and augmented reality tools were demonstrated by The Urban Vitality Lab, one of the center’s research labs.
Participants
Co-chairs
Omer, Itzhak – Tel Aviv University, Israel
Participants (alphabetical order by last name)
Almagor, Jonathan – The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Blumenfeld-Lieberthal, Efrat – Tel Aviv University, Israel
Bornioli, Anna – Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Carbon Christian, Claus – University of Bamberg, Germany
Chaix, Basile – INSERM, France
Fisher-Gewirtzman, Dafna – Technion, Israel
Helbich, Marco – Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Jiang, Bin – University of Gävle, Sweden
Kaplan, Sigal – The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Pafka, Elek – University of Melbourne, Australia
Pearlmutter, David – Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
Plaut, Pnina – Technion, Israel
Portugali, Juval – Tel Aviv University, Israel
Potchter, Oded – Tel Aviv University, Israel
Resch, Bernd – University of Salzburg, Austria
Rofe, Yodan – Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
Rotem-Mindali, Orit – Bar Ilan University, Israel
Sahar, Adva – Tel Aviv University, Israel
Singer, Matan – The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel