copenhagen04designof walkingenvironments

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Paper presented to Walk21-VCities for People, The Fifth International Conference on

Walking in the 21stCentury, June 9-11 2004, Copenhagen, Denmark

www.citiesforpeople.dk; www.walk21.com

Design of walking environments for spiritual renewal

Jody Rosenblatt Naderi

Assistant Professor, Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning

Texas A&M University, College of Architecture, Texas A&M University

Contact details:


Assistant Professor,Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning College of Architecture,

Texas A&M University College Station

Texas 77845USA

phone: +1 979.845.1019

[email protected]

Abstract

While existing development pedestrian standards affect environmental design at the city,

neighborhood and site scale, it is clear that the fundamental evidence for those standards may

not have addressed all forms of walking needs. This paper presents a new lens with which toregard those standards such that the human need for spiritual renewal can be accommodated as

an integral part of the urban fabric. Streetscape zones and pedestrian districts have become anintegral part of community transportation networks for many reasons. Traditional design

guidelines and standards related to aesthetic and environmental criteria have been developed

to create unified district design and to strengthen community identity. From streetscapes andgreenways to pavers and paths, integrating walking environments into community

development is occurring at all scales. In this paper, we describe a creative inquiry into the

question of the impact of traditional streetscape design variables on encouraging walking for

spiritual health and renewal.

This inquiry into walking environments includes a sequence of field studies coupled withdesign explorations into site-specific pedestrian behavior related to spiritual renewal. Theresearch team includes a group of professional practitioners in planning and landscape

architecture as well as a rabbi a priest and a medical doctor. In addition the research isorganized to include an educational and training component, in this instance, students of

landscape architecture and urban planning as well as computer science.


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The preliminary findings are environmental design variables that subjects indicate contribute

positively to their experience of walking environments for spiritual renewal. Thephenomenology of experiencing full aesthetic design (sound, touch, smell as well as visual)

may have heightened importance when designing walks for spiritual health. The physical

design of new communities and the reconstruction of existing infrastructure may consider a

need to reflect on the potential impact of our streetscape and open space designs on supportinghealing walks that encourage spiritual health purposes.

While as yet incomplete, the study raises interesting questions regarding the need to examineand revise existing design practices and guidelines for city streets and public open space such

that healthy communities could become more of a reality at the site specific scale based onconsideration of the environmental variables that encourage walking for spiritual renewal.


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Biography

Graduate of Harvard University with a Masters degree in Landscape Architecture, Jody had

been in both public and private practice for over twenty years before joining the faculty at the

Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M University. Her

role as Streetscape Manager for the City of Toronto in Canada gave her direct responsibilityfor planning, design and stewardship of over 700 kilometers of streetscape environments. She

has won several awards in diverse disciplines including art, architecture, transportation and

forestry. Her current research interest in pedestrian environment at Texas TransportationInstitute has led her to work with Rabbis and Public Health professionals who have given

healing focus to her work. She is currently teaching multi-disciplinary site planning at thegraduate design level and pursuing life long interest in the role of sacred landscapes in the

city.

When research is conducted at the edge of several domains, it can appear unfocused. Yet

being on the edge of several domains is also the site of making knowledge, in the center of a

new, yet undefined domain.

My current research crosses design/art with transportation and health industries. My journey is

one of an experimental way of studying walking and teaching pedestrian design. Findings to

date provide health and safety performance measures and predictable outcomes frompedestrian design I follow the Anishnabe axiom Everything is alive and we are all related. I

think of people in the ecology of the planet as the self-reflective part of the whole mercurical

system, which is a tremendous and joyful responsibility. We read and reflect on ourselves andwe create from that reflection. Mixed in with the joy, there is a lot of pain on the planet. We

need healing that reconnects broken connections. We need to understand our place in the

ecology of place.

From a female perspective with training in the School of Fine Arts, I began in landscape

architecture with a set of parameters that I thought were givens in the design process of aprojects life connection to the primeval, nurturing dimensions, unnamable colors, intuitive

pattern mapping, making something beautiful. I wondered how much of our environmental

dis-ease and economic failures are the result of repression of unique voice and new findings in

the name of status quo de-sire. Spirit always came through dreams to me and I practice fromdreams.

A street in Seoul Korea, transposed into a place for spirit walk. Image by JunHyun Kim


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Design of walking environments for spiritual renewal


Assistant Professor, Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning

Texas A&M University, College of Architecture, Texas A&M University

Introduction

While the transportation industry reconsiders its standards and design guidelines for greeningthe streets to respond to context sensitive design, the Center for Disease Control and the

Surgeon Generals office in the United States are taking a close look at identifying variables

which favour pedestrian and bicycle (active living) use over the automobile (passive living)for purposes of improving national health and reducing obesity and related medical care costs

(1, 2). Over the last five years, the growing interest in sustainable soft surface boulevard

treatment and green infrastructure within transportation corridors is finding its newestproponents in the health field.

A major trend in the design of pedestrian environments is the design of streets, neighborhoods

and cities that support walking for various health purposes. Yet the transportation,infrastructure and public works agencies are the ultimate governance as they are charged with

the responsibility for the oversight on capital investment, operational management and long

term sustainability of multi-billion dollar systems.

The transportation industry reconstructs the city street infrastructure every 30 years in North

America. Concurrently, the demand for diverse walking environments is increasing. Our

hypothesis here is that, parallel to the increasing complexity of society, is the demand forcomplex functionality from the city street. Will the public works and infrastructure mandate

of the agencies responsible shift to accommodate these emerging trends? One of the emerging

paradigms is to provide walking environments that address health and the standards and thepolicies are still being shaped using traditional research methods of engineering. Rosenblatts

previous research published last year in Transportation Research Record indicates that the

green edged street is not only the preferred walking environment for people specificallywalking for health purposes but is linked to decreasing traffic accident frequency and severity

in specific locations.

If we assume that the performance measures like health outcomes and accident reduction are

measures applicable to urban design of walking environments, then these environments shouldbe designed to maximize the speed and comfort of recovery and provide a healingenvironment for specific health outcomes. Without digressing into the impact of environment

on health outcomes in this presentation, it is recognized and promoted by funding agencies

like Robert Wood Johnson and National Institute of Health and the Center for Disease Controlthat a major trend in the delivery of health care will depend on the design of communities

which support healthy, active living. Measuring health outcomes from design has emerged as

a significant research area in recent years.


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The central question of this study is to look at the design of pedestrian environments that willfacilitate access to health. In the work of Rabbi Karff at the School of Public Health in

Houston, health care practitioners in the West are embracing the holistic nature of healing by

increasingly addressing the spiritual or non-physical elements of human health. Healing is a

state of mind and spirit as well as a physical state and the environment has been reported tohave had a significant impact on improving health outcomes (time needed for recovery,

increased ability to perform normal functions post-treatment, longer sustained periods of

functionality).

The AASHTO guidelines present a unique view of the minimum dimensions for thepedestrian: The physical dimensions of the human body are reflected in the design of

pedestrian facilities. Studies have shown that nearly all adult males have a shoulder width less

than 525 mm and a depth of less than 330 mm. For design purposes, the area of a body isapproximated by an ellipse 600 mm wide and 450 mm deep(3). Considering only the spatial

needs of the pedestrian as many current engineering and planning standards are inclined to do,

the anthropologist Edward Hall called for a perspective on mans spatial needs in the 1960sas follows: If one looks at human beings in the way that the early slave traders did,

conceiving of their space requirements simply in terms of the limits of the body, one pays very

little attention to the effects of crowding. If, however, one sees man surrounded by a series of

invisible bubbles which have measurable dimensions, architecture can be seen in a newlight.(4). With extensive criticism from STPP and other walking and biking advocates, a new

demand for better pedestrian design standards has emerged. The transportation industry has

scrambled over the last ten to fifteen years to develop better understanding of pedestrian usewith capacity-driven concepts like Level of Service, and people per square meter or kilometer,

and kilometers or meters per hour or minute. These are all measures founded in the

transportation industry which ask how many people can you fit through a given space over agiven period of time (5, 6) with the least amount of congestion. The American conduit for the

pedestrian space needs to be defined in terms that are harmonious with the other utility and

infrastructure demands placed on the transportation landscape. Lynchs theory has relevancehere in understanding that it provides the urban design structure for reconstruction (7). The

car continues to be the champion because, as of yet, the cost of change from car-focused to

pedestrian-focused environments has only been worth it in special districts within the fabric of

the city.

Sacred landscapes are ones where one might consider there is a concentration of good chi

life energy as defined by the Chinese feng shui designers. Landscapes of this nature includetemples, ceremonial sites and wilderness preserves(8). These are the landscapes where sacred

energy and memorial content is at is highest. We can understand a bit of the spiritual renewal

behavior by pausing to examine the nature of these locations.

In the Spring of 2004, Maya Angelou suggested an overarching objective in lifes path to a

group of students and faculty and citizens in a recent speech given at Texas A&M University,

paraphrased as: We want to survive. And not only to survive, but an opportunity to thrive.And not just to thrive, but an opportunity to thrive with passion. This level of achievement of

human potential requires a focus on spiritual renewal as a level of health that can manifest not

only in the resorts and wilderness of engagement with nature, but also in the spontaneous


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occurrences in the secular landscape of our daily lives. Thomas Barrie, a brilliant architect,

provides a clue in the following comment: It is clear that the path and place are not only afundamental ordering device in the built environment but are imbued with symbolic content as

well. A legible path sequence not only orients one physiologically, but psychologically and

spiritually as well. Traditionally it has symbolized a going forth from the known to the

unknown, the content of which is still present today (9).

Methodology

To identify landscape variables that might be associated with perceptions of the sacred, weconducted a survey of sites, some identified as World Heritage sites that had a sacred aspect.

We also reviewed in cinematography the landscape qualities of settings that were used to

portray scenes that included aspects of spiritual renewal. In studio, we explored landscapearchetypes and defined path and place conditions that were associated with spirit renewal.

From these environmental analyses, we developed a dictionary of landscape types that

constitute walking for spiritual renewal (Figure 1)

.

Figure 1. Typology of walks: destination walks of resort or wilderness character

Once we had the beginnings of a language of spiritually healing walks, we conducted fieldinterviews with people walking for health in various walking environments in Texas. These

personal interviews yielded grass-roots data regarding the relationship of walkers with the

environmental characteristics ranging from social to physical and cognitive.

The structure of the field interviews was a multiple choice questionnaire querying perceptions

of the physical environment. We have conducted three different pilot studies based on the

intercept survey methodology described in detail by Naderi and Raman (10). This


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interdisciplinary collaboration between design and artificial intelligence seeks to understand

the decision making process that motivates someone to take a walk at a particular location.This was a user-specific, site-specific model for soliciting information from pedestrians about

the location they are walking in at the time of the interview. The on-site method was

developed to ensure that the phenomenological attributes of perception would not be lost in a

survey that was disconnected from place.

We initially interviewed 50 people ranging in age from 18 to 65 and above using a preliminary

survey instrument on eight different sites in Texas initiated in 2001 and completed in thesummer of 2002. The sites where the interviews were conducted produced responses that

indicated higher instances of walking for fun, contemplation or healing. Four of thesites had greater amounts of health-motivated responses and they are described in Table 1.

Site Name Location Type of Facility

Labyrinth Galveston

Texas

Corner park at community center, open to the

public, unscreened from traffic

Brothers Pond College StationTexas Neighborhood park at corner of local roadand Rio Grande arterial; slight berm

screening in park with running track

Rio Grande College Station

Texas

Sidewalk along arterial road; set back from

curb lane with .5 metre grass buffer

Hort Garden Texas A&MUniversity

campus

Demonstration garden sited along local road;includes strong entry feature, flower displays

and pathways of various types

Table 1. Study sites where pedestrian surveys were conducted

Each site used in the study was documented (Figure 2) and materiality was recorded so that

the interviews could be tied to site-specific ecological conditions of the location of theinterview.

After the initial study, we took the instrument into the design studio in the spring of 2004 andasked students to use the survey to take a second look at the Brothers Pond and Rio Grande

Avenue study sites in College Station. This second study was done in the spring season, forty

people were interviewed between the ages of 18 and 65. Each researcher was responsible forfive interviews. From this most recent interview, we were able to begin to discern between

people walking for physical health or exercise from people walking for spiritual or

psychological renewal.

The unique quality of the Brother Pond / Rio Grande sites was their generic value. The pair ofsites was typical of both corner neighborhood parks as well as of higher-income neighborhood

streets in the area, which had a narrow green edge between the sidewalk and the road.


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Figure 2. Brothers Pond neighborhood park and Rio Grande sidewalk showing typical treelessgreen grass buffer edge. This site was a destination for people walking for health beyond the

confines of the immediate neighborhood.


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Findings

In the context of the case studies and articles, certain patterns of pedestrian movement are

emerging as being related to the express purpose of spiritual renewal. We are beginning to

understand the important parameters of design for spiritual renewal from the users

perspective. Using Kevin Lynchs dictionary as a way of expediting the organization of ourfindings, we analyzed our data.

Path: The patterns of sequential movement for people walking for health are the mostsignificantly different than the routes designed by transportation community. Traditionally,

the transportation models consider commuting purposes and the route is more of an origin-destination survey. Much of transportation work is focused on origin-destination surveys. In

the case of health walks, we know that the route is not an origin-destination type, but rather a

loop, varying in sequence length, driven not by expediency but by intensity ofphenomenological experience or health benefit or achievement of target health rate. To grasp

the unique random aspect of the spiritual or psychological renewing walk, the following was

relayed in a personal email with a walking commuter:

People always laugh at me when I told them I walked to work using a different pathevery day. They thought that I was paranoid. But it wasnt that at all. I walked different

ways depending on what was going on: whether the roses in one garden were likely to be

in bloom that morning or whether the trash was out on the sidewalk at the fast foodrestaurant which stunk up the whole block. Everyday was different and the different

route I chose let me get closer to they day.

From our observations at the study sites, the routes of the people walking for spiritual renewal

were either highly prescribed, as in the Labyrinth, or were completely random.

Node: Nodes were that catalyst for most of the walks for spiritual renewal. People sought

nodes or walked connections that were considered nodal, with high levels of place quality.The work by Messervy identified sacred landscapes in categories such as bluff, cave,

mountain top and so on suggesting that the quality of spiritual connection differs in each

location and that each serves a different level of need. The labyrinth falls into the category of

sacred path, yet because of its geometric qualities, the labyrinth that we studied also has thecharacteristic of a node (Figure 3).


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Figure 3. The labyrinth site at the corner of Market and 4th

Street in Galveston Texas.


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We were fortunate to have a recreation of the Chartres cathedrals labyrinth on one of thecorners of Galvestons street network, because the highest valued site for walking for spiritual

renewal was at the Labyrinth node. Variables that showed up as positively affecting the

decision to walk for spiritual renewal included:

1. Availability,2. proximity (llll)3. tranquility, quiet (ll)4. greenery (lll)5. well maintained6. outside space without rules7. safe8. good surface area, easy to walk on surface, liked surface (llll)9. colourful pavers10.grass (ll)11.context around walking area has a nice feel12.strong and interesting social theme

Negative attributes identified by respondents on the labyrinth site include:

1. too close to street (lll)2. lack of seating3. traffic noise (ll)4. not enough landscaping, greenery (lll)5. too narrow6. bad colour7. needs water8. food smell from nearby was annoying (ll)9. too congested

If more than one respondent stated the same attribute, an additional (l) is indicated. An

analytical review of the results included both intuitive and unusual findings. Both by itspositive presence and its negative absence, the presence of landscaping or greenery was the

theme occurring with the highest frequency.

It is clear that green-centered development appears to be a catalyst for spiritual renewal and

health. Although Ulrichs study focused more on the presence of gardens rather than on

pedestrian or walking facilities, the theme emerging at the labyrinth is consistent with findingsby Ulrich related to the health benefits of green environments in stress reduction and recovery

(11).

The unusual quality that distinguished the people walking for spiritual renewal from thosewalking for exercise was that a higher level of environmental quality was expected at the

threshold and once deep into the spiritual walk, a complete disregard or lack of awareness of

the environment was reported. The higher expectation included presence of water, dappled


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light, control of glare and bad odors, etc. This was expressed by people walking for fun,

stress relief, contemplation and motivations along this line and not expressed by peoplewalking for exercise, to lose weight, to walk the dog.

Figure 4 Path on the left characterizes green edge and randomness of preferred walking

environment for spiritual renewal; path on right characterizes aspects of typical existing

walking facility close to home in average neighborhood in Toronto, Canada.

Edge and District: The presence of green edge, or well-defined edge of space was

indicated as significantly affecting the preference for walking for health at the Brothers Pond

and Rio Grande Avenue. In the forty additional interviews conducted around the BrothersPond / Rio Grande area, the quantity of the greenery was the predominant theme of the people

walking for health purposes, where more was seen as better in contrast with those walking

for commuting purposes who saw a minimal amount of greenery or bare conditions as stillacceptable for the decision to commute. On transportation corridors studied like Rio Grande

the presence of a green buffer at back of the curb is sufficient to attract people to walk in the

area.


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Discussion and conclusion

In the context of the existing sacred landscape and features associated with sacred landscapes,

green-accessible walking paths and pedestrian nodal landscapes suggest a revision to the basicstandard for pedestrian facilities integrated in the civic landscape of public infrastructure. The

presence of light and the control of sound, smell and microclimate are important

considerations in the provision of pedestrian facilities in the study area. If the public mandatewere to create pedestrian networks and access that encouraged health, then one would by

necessity provide opportunities for spiritual and physical health renewal integrated withwalking environments.

Students involved in the observation, survey, data analysis and ultimately design were able tounderstand that the evidence around the alignment of pedestrian facilities and their contextual

design was perhaps more complex than providing physical access from A to B. Many of the

design proposals for the various health related pedestrian facility or walking designs over thelast three years of studio instruction at Texas A&M University include reflections on the data

collected and discussions of its implications. These studios have been incorporating a service

learning approach with community participation design and client-based work utilizing the

evidence from the field research. We have designed churches, plazas, main streets, andcommunities using the evidence and research to inform the designs. The students gain an

ability to present performance measures associated with the human experience and wellness at

places which otherwise would be gray infrastructure.

The findings from the experiments and the studio inquiry at this point suggest a tentative set of

emerging design guidelines for paths and nodes in Texas public infrastructure if intending toprovide opportunities for holistic health renewal and encourage walking for multiple purposes.

We are drawn to the idea that the landscapes and cities around us can accept our interventions

much like the restoration ecologists plan and design; the idea is to jumpstart the process ofrestoration and here, the idea is to jumpstart the process of retrofitting the city to create

environments that support walking for spiritual renewal. The sustainability factor, like in

ecological restoration, is key and depends on a careful analysis of the existing physical,

climatic and sacred structure of the city. Then perhaps the following guidelines can beexplored.

1. Align the path to receive benefit from sun, moon, stars and wind.2. Provide access to the sacred structures within the community open space.3. Incorporate places for pause and meditation adjacent to the path that are micro-

climatically controlled through green plantings, water and lighting.4. Always incorporate a green buffer between travel-way of cars and pedestrian path.5. Make spaces along the path with well-defined edges and legible thresholds.6. Design for all senses

It is not possible to throw out the city streets and replace them with streets designed to the

greenheart standards that we may dream of in one action. However, there are spontaneous


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opportunities for jumpstarting access to places of spiritual renewal without having to drive out

to the wilderness or to expensive resorts.

Bibliography

1. Williamson, D. F. The Prevention of Obesity. New England Journal of Medicine, Vol.

341, No. 15, Oct. 7, 1999, pp. 1140-1141

2. Satcher, D. The Virtual Office of the Surgeon General: Surgeon General Launches Effort to

Develop Action Plan to Combat Overwight, Obesity. Accessed December 19, 2001.http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/todo/pressreleases/obesitypressrelease.htm.

3. American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO). 1995. APolicy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets 1994. Washington, D.C.: American

Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

4. Hall, E.T. 1966. The Hidden Dimension. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc

5. Seneviratne, P.N , and J.F. Morall. Level of Service on Pedestrian facilities. Transportation

quarterly, Vol.39, No.1, 1985, pp.109-123

6. Landis, B. W., Vattikuti, V.R., Ottenberg, R.M., McLeod, D.S. and Guttenplan, M. (2001).

Modeling the Roadside Walking Environment: A Pedestrian Level of Service. TRB Paper No.01-0511, TRB, National Research Council, Washington, D.C.

7. Lynch, Kevin. Image of a City. MIT Press

8. Tabb, Phillip, Sacred Architecture, 2003.

9. Barrie, Thomas. Spiritual Path, Sacred Place: Myth, ritual, and Meaning in Architecture,

Shambala Books, Boston and London, 1996

10. Naderi, J. R. and Raman, B., On the Nature of Walking, ARCC conference proceedings,Phoenix, Arizona, 2003

11. Ulrich, R. S., Effects of gardens on health outcomes: theory and research, 1999, inMarcus, C.C. and Barnes, M. (Ed), Healing Gardens, New York: Wiley, pp. 27-86

Photos provided by students of Professor Naderi and Jody Rosenblatt Naderi.

Graphics by Rui Zhan and Jun Hyun Kim

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