The use of behaviourally oriented criteria to assess environmental quality of residential streets is considered in this study. The two main aims of the study were (a) to establish objectives for environmental design based on residents' perceptions of traffic and design variables and (b) to develop a subjective procedure for assessing street environmental quality and to verify the extent to which it agrees with existing procedures developed in europe. Ten one-way residential streets in haifa were selected for detailed study. The method of study drew on two sources of information. First, 147 residents of the 10 selected streets responded to a questionnaire in which perception levels regarding a number of street attributes were assessed. Second, a set of systematic observations and objective measurements of traffic and environmental variables was conducted for each street. Multivariate analysis of interview responses, traffic-related parameters, and environmental indicators was conducted to understand better the way in which factors tend to cluster and to develop quantitative relationships from regression analyses of responses to various conditions. The questionnaire data were summarised using the principal components model of multivariate analysis. Four composite variables were extracted and defined from the original 11 variables. Stepwise multiple regression analysis with environmental and traffic variables as predictors yielded correlations of the order of 0.60, Indicating that individual perception can be satisfactorily predicted. Street rankings on the basis of environmental quality were assessed according to three different procedures. A fair degree of agreement was achieved (R equals 0.70).
Samenvatting