General Session: Spatial Analysis (3/3) Urban street landscape and well-being in Brussels

Résumé En

Urban landscapes are the backdrop of life in more than half of the world population. The streetsand public spaces provide the setting for urban activities, with buildings, gardens and parks asbackground. The layout of this urban street landscape influences our way of perceiving the city butalso, more broadly, affects well-being. To support this assumption, it is necessary to well characterizethe urban fabrics in order to link it with well-being. Finding the spatial unit at the right scale hasalways been a challenge for spatial analysts. Administrative partitions (wards, municipalities) oftendo not match with urban landscapes: each spatial unit is heterogeneous in terms of built-up andnot built-up surfaces hence not fitting with further spatial statistical analyses. Araldi and Fusco(2017) have developed a new method - Multiple Fabric Assessment method (MFA) - with the idea ofcharacterizing urban fabrics as they are perceived by the pedestrians freely moving on the streets, sofrom the road network. The original MFA method does not include any vegetation indicator, while thebeneficial impacts of urban green spaces on psychological, emotional and mental health has alreadyled to numerous analyses.The MFA method is applied to Brussels (Belgium). The basic spatial unit (Proximity Bands) is firstdefined around each street segment. Each Proximity Bands unit is further described by 21 geometricaland spatial indicators of urban form as perceived by the city user; three of them are related tovegetation. Geostatistic analyses (ILINCS) are then achieved to identify local patterns of urban formfeatures. Finally, Bayesian clustering is carried out to identify and describe families of urban fabrics.The application of this variant of the MFA method makes it possible to highlight twelve familiesof urban fabrics in Brussels. This result highlights elements specific to the city's history, such asbruxellisation - destruction of part of the historic center to build offices - and garden cities.This typology of urban fabrics is then linked to mental health and well-being. Two types of analysisare carried out: a qualitative and a quantitative one. The qualitative analysis consists in walkinginterviews and mapping exercises with forty Brussels residents. The typology enabled us to definethe interviews places in order to explore a different range of urban fabrics. In the quantitativeanalysis, Health Interview Survey (HIS) data are used to investigate the relationships betweenmental health and the built/non-built environment, while accounting for demographic, socioeconomicfactors, lifestyle, air and noise pollution. These two analyses are ongoing and the first results willbe discussed.