Measurement of urban vitality with time-lapsed street-view images and object-detection for scalable assessment of pedestrian-sidewalk dynamics.

ABSTRACT: Principles of dense, mixed-use environments and pedestrianisation are influential in urban planning practice worldwide. A key outcome espoused by these principles is generating "urban vitality", the continuous use of street sidewalk infrastructure throughout the day, to promote safety, economic viability and attractiveness of city neighbourhoods. Vitality is hypothesised to arise from a nearby mixture of primary uses, short blocks, density of buildings and population and a diversity in the age and condition of surrounding buildings. To investigate this claim, we use a novel dataset of 2.1 million time-lapsed day and night images at 145 representative locations throughout the city of Accra, Ghana. We developed a measure of urban vitality for each location based on the coefficient of variati

SUBMITTER: Nathvani R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7617441 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature