Attract or repel: how street features shape pedestrians’ leisure walks in cities

The paper presents a field study analysing how pedestrians walked for leisure purposes in a familiar urban area, and why they walked as they did. Using mobile-based GPS, the walking trajectories of 44 participants were recorded, followed by the administration of a post-walk survey. Results show that participants gravitated towards five distinct paths that were similar in length (three shorter and two longer paths), yet observably different with respect to specific street features. Correspondingly, participants rated street features associated with these differences as factors that either attracted them towards, or repelled them away, from walking in specific streets.