ADAPTNESS ASSESSMENT OF PEDESTRIAN STREET DURING CRISES LIKE COVID-19

Abstract

The modern urban planning is focused towards encouraging pedestrian movement by ensuring their safety and comfort during the walk. Further, COVID-19 pandemic has abruptly obstructed our normal way of life that includes of our local as well as global transport systems. There is greater need of making the public places more pedestrian friendly with the provision of appropriate walking and cycling networks, which can tackle the social distancing issues. This paper presents a novel approach to quantitatively analyze the efficiency of present urban pedestrian streets in maintaining social distancing among pedestrians. The survey research techniques, GIS tool and technique, statistical techniques, and space syntax methods are implemented and tested for evaluating present scenario of the pedestrian movement in relation to the urban layout, in the case of Main-Market Street of Hamirpur town of Himachal Pradesh, India. The regression and correlation analysis is performed between outcomes of axial and segment analysis to establish the interrelation among spatial structure and behavioral phenomena. This paper is an attempt to generate the need of rethinking the pedestrian planning process with more holistic approaches to achieve sustainable urban environment.