From exterior to interior: Mapping pedestrian movement in station complex buildings

Pedestrian movement in the built environment has attracted research foci from both urban planning and transportation. Characteristics of built environment, such as urban forms, road network system, and building layout, can affect people’s movement in different space. Thus, the quality of the space becomes measurable through evaluating people’s movement for design/planning purpose. Nowadays, the built environment is becoming more complex, in which the exterior and interior space are integrated to form a multilevel network. Studying the pedestrian movement in those areas can deepen the understanding toward the mechanism of people’s route choice, and provide useful insights for both spatial design and urban planning. The objective of this study is to construct a model which can map the pedestrian flow in the station complex buildings. The space syntax and SNA (Social network analysis) methodologies are adopted to investigate people’s movement in the built environment with integrated exterior and interior space. The station complex buildings of Tuen Mum station, Hong Kong is selected as case study. The network that connecting the station and surrounding function areas (within walkable distance) is consists of road system, bridges, and interior passageways. The indexes that evaluating the network characteristics, such as integration in space syntax and centralities in SNA will be calculated and compared. The modelling results will be validated by the on-site survey. The accomplished model can be used as a practical tool in designing complex space at metro station catchment area.