Pedestrian Traffic Planning and the Perception of the Urban Environment: A French Example

Planning pedestrian traffic in the city involves a better understanding of pedestrians' behavior and their perception of the urban environment. Lynch's (1961) studies proposed a qualitative method. An alternative method, essentially quantitative, is proposed here: pedestrians surveyed are asked to locate on a paper some well-known landmarks (six in all). Distances between each pair of them are measured. The model allows (1) interpretation of the degree of agreement between mental maps, and (2) a study of the ‘mean’ map. Perception seems to make space more symmetrical. Distortions can be explained by two effects: differences in transportation modes, and a particular knowledge of the neighborhood. The mental map recovered through multidimensional scaling is compared with the topographic one. It does not have the metric topology.