Spatial Orientation and the Angularity of Urban Routes

The influence of route angularity on the spatial orientation of pedestrians navigating in an urban field setting was examined. Sixty pedestrians were stopped at one of three locations in the same neighborhood, one on a street orthogonal to the local grid pattern and two on streets oblique to the local grid pattern. They were asked to point to several nonvisible targets, both local features and cardinal directions. Pointing error on four of the five targets was greater on both oblique streets than on the orthogonal street, especially for the cardinal directions; response time was greater only on the second oblique street, a secondary street that is connected to the local grid system via the first oblique street. Length of residency was related to both accuracy and response speed. Results demonstrate that environmental orientation depends in part on the angularity of route structure, the disorienting effect of oblique routes being due to memory distortion or imprecision associated with oblique routes.