A Pedestrian-centric Design Strategy: Melding Reactive Scripting with Multi-agent Simulation

Over last two decades, walkability has been increasingly recognised as a pivotal component for urban liveability and sustainability. As a result, facilitating pedestrian-friendly environments is now becoming an urgent need for many urban design and planning projects. This research investigates a computer-aided design strategy to optimise urban forms to enhance precinct walkability. Agent-based modelling (ABM) is used to simulate both mobile pedestrian behaviours and immobile built environments. Urban forms are evolved informed by walking, taking multiple design parameters into consideration. The principle of reactive scripting is applied to keep designers in the simulation loop, allowing them to make critical adjustments during the concept design process. Acting as the procedural core, a walking index system based on precedent research is encoded and used for the evaluation process. This method is applied and tested against a practical scenario in Melbourne, Australia. The investigation site is situated on the Arden-Macaulay precinct in Melbourne's inner North, which will betransformed from its former industrial area to a sustainable mixed-use community.

Through this case study we demonstrate how this transformation from industrial to mixed use commercial and housing can be shaped by adopting our pedestrian centric ABM modelling approach, addressing a range of spatial and temporal urban walkability concerns. The flexibility of our approach and its successful demonstration in the Arden-Macaulay project suggest significant potential for improving walkability in other urban scenarios throughout the world.