Revisiting Lively Streets: Social Interactions in Public Space

2018/06/18 by Vikas Mehta, Jennifer K. Bosson · 1 citation
Engineering · Social Sciences · #Place Attachment and Urban Studies #Urban Design and Spatial Analysis #Urban Transport and Accessibility

paper · doi:10.1177/0739456x18781453

openalex publication_date 2018/06/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25

Abstract

Given the investment in streets, it is imperative for planners and urban designers to determine what makes streets social places. Defining street liveliness as stationary social behavior and duration of stay, we present an empirical longitudinal study extending previous research findings. Using observations and visual surveys, regression analysis and factor analysis, we study liveliness and determine its correlation with street characteristics. Extending prior findings, we ask, what changes in street characteristics over time predict increases in liveliness? Complementing previous results, we found liveliness was significantly predicted by increases in commercial seating, public seating, block variety, independent businesses, and community-gathering places.

Citations

• Is Support for Traditionally Designed Communities Growing? Evidence From Two National Surveys

Cited by

• MINGLE: VLMs for Semantically Complex Region Detection in Urban Scenes

Related

• Street View Sociability: Interpretable Analysis of Urban Social Behavior Across 15 Cities
• Rethinking walkability: Exploring the relationship between urban form and neighborhood social cohesion
• Streetscape Features Related to Pedestrian Activity
• From Car-Dependent to Public Space Enthusiast: How can a typology of attitudes help to understand social acceptance of street space reallocation projects?
• Diversity beyond density: experienced social mixing of urban streets