Research – Pedestrian Safety (families/children)

After getting in groups and receiving feedback from my previous research post, I am shifting my urban design analysis to focus more on pedestrian safety (safe, walkable streets) and how that impacts young families. That being said, air quality is still an important topic in this research as less walkable streets lead to more car usage which leads to more carbon emissions and thus worst air quality.

General Problem World Wide

As populations have grown and cities around the world have sprawled out, people rely way more on cars than on walking around, as they typically live farther and farther away from city centers. The problem with urban sprawl is broad and long ranging, from rising obesity levels to less walkable streets to car accidents to poor air quality. This affects people from all walks of life, although usually families with children are seen more in the sprawl than in downtown areas, so this tends to have a greater impact on their health and wellbeing.

Problem Specific to Eugene

In Eugene, there are not many streets that allow for social gathering or feelings of safety from cars (superilles do not exist in Eugene). We do not have places were young families can gather and hang out in the urban downtown center. People are therefore more likely to stick to their cars in order to get around, leading to higher levels of car and pedestrian accidents, worse air quality, and lack of social connectivity.

Resources

A really interesting resource on the vision of walkability in Eugene, OR:

http://www.wecaneugene.org/walkability#:~:text=According%20to%20Walkscore.com%2C%20Eugene%27s%20overall%20walkability%20score%20is,Oregon–%20Portland%2C%20Corvallis%2C%20and%20Springfield%20all%20outrank%20us.