The effect of land use on the behavior of pedestrians in the urban streets (The case of Daneshjou Street in Mashhad)

This research attempts to shed light on land use impact on activities and pedestrian behavior. Furthermore, this paper aims to analyze the influential factors on urban street livability and vitality in order to provide a favorable basis to improve behavior diversity in urban public space. Daneshjou Street is a case study in this article. This street is located in western Mashhad. Mashhad is the capital of Khorasan_Razavi Province. According to pervious research, all actions undertaken to respond to human needs is considered an activity but behavior is how we do these activities. In this article, the category of Jan Gehl (necessary activities, optional activities, social activities) is used for studying behavior. According to investigation toward land use planning, we can consider frequency of use, the purpose of visits, and functional scales as essential land use properties. All these land use properties have a variety of sub-criteria. The purpose of the visit are a response to secondary needs and primary needs. Land use functional scales have neighborhood scale, regional scales, and district scales. Frequency of use includes once or more visits in a day, once or more visits in a week, once or more visits in a month, once or more visits in a year and visits at uncertain times. In this case study, we determined 5 types of land use:Commercial, Office, Open space (park), Mix-use residential and general service (gas station). This article is trying to answer the following question: "How do different land uses cause different behaviors? It seems that most urban design literature and text books have focused on the effects of different land uses on people‘s activities, and behaviors in urban public space is not studied or only narrowed to pedestrian walkways. This is a qualitative and descriptive analytic research study. The chosen methodology for the study behavior was direct observation and behavior pattern analysis and the methodology for studying land use comprised of observations and questionnaires. The sample size was 138. In Daneshjou Street, there are diverse activities and behaviors; for instance, it was possible to consider Walk to shops, Walk to do something, Transit, Walk to do a job, stand to do something or stand to wait as necessary activities and stroll, sit to eat and drink, sit to read, sit to rest and stand to eat and drink as optional activities. In addition, social activities observed included 2 people or more talking to each other, Cultural events and buying from venders. In Daneshjou Street, Mashhad, the frequency of necessary activities, optional activities and social activities were 29.5%, 33.7% and 36.8%, respectively.. Thus, social activities occurred more frequently than others activities in this case study. Pearson correlation test and chi square test were used for analyzing the information In conclusion, this study proves that land uses with a district functional scale, land uses with more than once a week visit frequency, and land uses responding to secondary needs could provide more variety of pedestrian behaviors in Daneshjou Street.