"How do cities transform twilight zones in their city into attractive places actually promoting active lifestyles instead of discouraging them?"
Expertise
Infrastructures are intertwined with our living environment. Daily people move under, along and over infrastructural networks. In Smart and Healthy City Schiedam regional infrastructures of highways and railroads lead to a high accessibility of the city. On the other hand, these infrastructures form a barrier within the city, especially the underpasses for the active modes. How do cities transform these incoherent twilight zones into attractive places promoting active lifestyles instead of discouraging bicycle usage?
To make focused and correct design decisions for underpasses used by active modes cities need to know more about the experience of these environments and the impact of them on different user-groups. By linking educational activities and by applying the Virtual Reality simulator for cycling (CycleSpex) for the first time in practice on this specific topic, BUas answered knowledge questions of the City of Schiedam and Rijkswaterstaat in an innovative way. A good example of how education meets innovation, knowledge, practice and policy.
Multiple studies, including a VR-study were conducted during 2017. Different objective and subjective perspectives on the experience of underpasses by cyclists within an urban context are analyzed and visualized. This resulted in the title for the whole study, namely “tunnel vision”. This first report bundles all studies conducted by students to the topic as well as the unique VR study to the cycling experience of large, medium and small underpasses in varying scenarios within the urban context. The second report is an image report which bring together the different studies in a visual way and supports the main report.
Partners: City of Schiedam, Rijkswaterstaat, Breda University of Applied Sciences
