Grand Challenges and Research | Urban Studies & Planning

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Fall SRP Proposal Abstract

Today, communities with spatial design features to promote sustainability are erupting all over the world.  However, in the Southern California sprawling suburbs many people are unsociable with their neighbors and their primary transportation is the automobile.  These residents moving into these sustainable communities require a cultural shift in order to be successful.  People have to be willing to walk more than they drive and share more time with their neighbors than the time they spend in their own backyard.  I will address community design features aimed at reducing automobile usage and promoting social interaction amongst neighbors through research, surveys of residents of two New Urbanism communities, interviews with each communities’ developers, and an interview with researchers from UCR’s Center for Sustainable Suburban Development.  To change how people live is a necessary cultural change for the sprawling suburbs in Southern California.

Winter Senior Research Project (SRP) Abstract

Pedestrian friendly design features of the built environment are the denominator to challenging the car culture in Southern California, changing the habits of residents is the numerator to the Pedestrianism equation. Changing the middleclass Southern California residents’ car culture mindset and making them walk more instead of drive requires each individual’s desire to be in public spaces over private spaces and the function-ability of walking instead. A presumed walkable community, Liberty Station, is designed to be more pedestrian friendly than a sprawling suburban community, such as the Point Loma suburbs. Liberty Station includes features that promote pedestrianism. Through survey research, interviews, and GIS analysis I performed an analysis of pedestrian activity in each of these communities and compared them to find that promoting pedestrianism through design is a successful approach encouraging people to walk instead of drive to obtain their daily needs so long as it is functional. Usually people’s preference to walk instead of drive to destinations change over time as the individual becomes more comfortable with being in public spaces rather than the privacy of their vehicle. Pedestrianism within communities is important for environmental, personal and community/social health. Pedestrian oriented communities are becoming more and more popular as time progresses and generations change.

Study's Major Findings and Contributions

Many New Urbanism communities have been researched all over the globe, but Southern California is a hot spot in great necessity of this research because Southern Californians have whole heartedly adopted the “car culture” and “individualistic” lifestyle of suburban sprawl. One day this culture will need to change and become more sustainable. We have implemented tester walkable communities into the Southern California region. All elements of a walkable community must be implemented in order for people to walk: mixed-use, positive pedestrian streetscape, close proximity, a safe environment, mild topography and it must be functional. Once these elements are in place, people living within these types of communities will eventually adjust to walking more instead of driving. So long as all elements promoting pedestrianism within a community are in place and individuals are capable of carrying the goods they obtain between destinations, they will eventually walk.  The built environment of Liberty Station shall be used a model community for other communities attempting become more walkable. 

Evidence

My research will simply add Southern California data to other previously conducted research throughout the globe.  Southern California is a prime place to research the success of walkable communities because they are a great concept theoretically to solve suburban sprawl, but whether they are a realistic solution should be determined by the behaviors of the residents.
In order to find out whether or not walkable community design concepts actually encourage people to walk more than drive and why that may be, a study about pedestrianism was conducted.  “A neighborhood measure[ment of] whether community design encourages or inhibits walking,” was performed by surveying random residents from both a walkable community and also an adjacent suburban community (Marshall, Brauer, and Frank, 2009, 1752).  The survey results of residents of the walkable community of Liberty Station (formerly known as the Naval Training Center) in Point Loma were used to compare against the survey results of residents of the Point Loma Suburbs.  The research questions were ultimately answered through survey questions (1) How often does each resident walk as oppose to drive to the MarketPlace Center? and (2) What reasons inhibit each resident from walking as oppose to driving?  These responses were complemented with interview responses.  The responses were solely based on each resident’s personal perception of how often they walked instead of drove and what deterred them from walking.  I surveyed residents at the MarketPlace Center on Rosecrans Drive in Point Loma and then compared these locations with the residents’ nearest cross streets to their home, as well as going randomly door-to-door surveying additional Liberty Station residents.  The MarketPlace Center is a central destination for both Point Loma suburb residents as well as the Liberty Station residents that is a mixed-use, one-stop-shop for daily needs, village-like area that encourages walking within it.  Interviewing people patronizing the Liberty MarketPlace Center, I found fifty percent of them were from other communities in the San Diego region.  This survey location limited my survey results to only two Liberty Station residents and eighteen Point Loma suburb residents, so as I just mentioned, I performed door-to-door surveys at random in Liberty Station in an effort to obtain more results from Liberty Station residents.  My survey questions addressed the resident’s perception of their own pedestrian habits to obtain their daily needs, their personal deterrents to walking, and their personal preferences of either public or private spaces, which was used to analyze personal comfort levels with walking on a sidewalk in comparison to how often they think they walk on average. 
In addition to survey research, I conducted four interviews.  One was with Mr. Wayne Raffesberger, officially a business consultant, but also known as one of the main advocates of the Liberty Station’s design concept.  Mr. Raffesberger explained the history behind the planning process for promoting pedestrianism in the Liberty Station.  An interview with Candice and Rick Magnus, residents’ of Liberty Station, was conducted in an effort to obtain some more in-depth knowledge about the experiences as a resident of the walkable community and some of the pros and cons to the functionability of walking within Liberty Station.  An informal interview with Mike Stepner, a former San Diego City architect, led to a discussion about accounting for the functionability of walking.  A telephone interview with Dr. Juliann Emmons Allison, the Associate Director of the Center for Sustainable Suburban Development at the University of California at Riverside, lead to a discussion based on her previous team research about sustainability through urban design and recording vehicle miles driven.  All of these interviews gave a well rounded approach to the issue of whether or not walkable designs are successful in terms of walkability in San Diego. 
The above research was conducted after I conducted a test survey series on the residents of the San Elijo Hills community in San Marcos.  The community has the streetscape elements for promoting pedestrianism, but the community lacks close proximity between residence’s and the town center, and the topography is much too steep for walking.  After conducting the test run of surveys, I found that not one person walked to the town center due to these two deterrents and thus, decided to choose a different community to study more in-depth.  The walkable community I chose to study pedestrianism more in depth was Liberty Station in San Diego, California. 

Spatial Dimension

The walkable community of Liberty Station provides elements that promote pedestrianism within itself.  These elements include reasonable proximity, topography, streetscape, and safety between destinations as well as mixed-use village like destinations to walk within.  In order to achieve all of these elements, the community’s aspects must be used for mixed-purposes and in a denser setting.  As a result, of this village-like setting, people come from all over the region to utilize and walk within the village.  Villages-like communities are good for everyone, even people from afar.   

Files

• Proposal - First Draft: Download
• Proposal - Final Copy: Download
• SRP - First Draft Upload: Download
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• Poster: Download
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