**Understanding Visual Engagement with Urban Street Edges along Non-Pedestrianised and Pedestrianised Streets Using Mobile Eye-Tracking**

### **James Simpson 1,\*, Kevin Thwaites 1 and Megan Freeth 2**


Received: 17 June 2019; Accepted: 4 August 2019; Published: 6 August 2019

**Abstract:** Existing knowledge of street edge experience has often been constructed using methods that offer a limited opportunity to gain empirical insight from the first-hand perspective of pedestrians. In order to address this, mobile eye-tracking glasses were used during the current investigation to provide a detailed understanding of pedestrian visual engagemen<sup>t</sup> with street edges along both non-pedestrianised and pedestrianised urban streets. Through this, the current study advances empirical knowledge of street edge experience from a perspective that has previously been challenging to capture and quantify. The findings demonstrate that people visually engage with street edge ground floors more than their upper floors, that visual engagemen<sup>t</sup> is distributed more towards the street edge on the walked side of non-pedestrianised streets than the opposite side, and that visual engagemen<sup>t</sup> with street edges of pedestrianised streets is balanced across both sides. The study findings also highlight how the everyday activities of pedestrians and di fferent streets being walked often influence the amount of visual engagemen<sup>t</sup> within these street edge areas. These insights provide a new understanding that develops existing knowledge of pedestrian street edge experience. Significantly, they also provide an empirical foundation from which to examine how design intervention can become more considerate of peoples' routine use of and experiential engagemen<sup>t</sup> with street edges along non-pedestrianised and pedestrianised urban streets.

**Keywords:** street edge; visual engagement; mobile eye-tracking; ground floors; pedestrian streets; non-pedestrianised streets
