Public Space Design as a Stimulator for Movement of Pedestrians. Case Study' Municipality of Vracar, City of Belgrade

摘要

Contemporary trends in urban design and shaping of public spaces are set in domains defined by the principles of sustainable development. One of the propensities relates to ever-increasing presence and implementation of spatial and programmatic concepts and projects in areas that foresee usage and affirmation of environmentally acceptable modalities of traffic such as pedestrian movement, cycling, usage of electrically powered vehicles, etc. With respect to that, pedestrian movement, as a basic and natural form of human movement has become a subject of research of multidisciplinary teams of experts and organisations on the global level, especially in the last two decades. This paper will demonstrate correlative actions of the quality of pedestrian environment and infrastructure directed towards pedestrians' motivation for movement along street ways that connect city centres. The research was conducted on the polygon of the Municipality of Vracar, City of Belgrade, encompassing local centres and links between them. Data has been collected by using methods of direct field research and the method of surveying the local inhabitants. By systematising and comparing the collected data this paper determines relations of the subject of research. Special care was dedicated to pedestrian environment along the observed ways, which includes arrangement and activities in the ground floors of the buildings, which define the street ways, equipment in street ways and conflicts with other participants in the traffic. The research has demonstrated that the frequency of pedestrian movement is not only proportional to equipment and surrounding of street ways, but to diversity and continuity of contents in the ground floors of the buildings, while being oppositely proportional to the number and frequency of motor vehicles. Main result of this paper and the aim of this research is defining suggestions for improving and equipping pedestrian ways and environments, which are to motivate people to opt for pedestrian movement in areas which are characterised as surmountable by pedestrians according to their dimensions and criteria. By creating such areas, the cities could be defined as a system of zones with predominantly pedestrian movements.