Doctoral Dissertation Research: Cognitive Agents and Pedestrian Redevelopment Modeling

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Cities across the country are trying to determine how to best deal with existing systems of transportation infrastructure while incorporating shifting views about public health, urban mobility, and environmental sustainability. In many locales, planners have proposed pedestrian-oriented redevelopment projects that would require a fundamental shift in the spatial organization of the city. This doctoral dissertation research project will enhance understanding of how structural changes to the urban environment would impact individual behaviors. The doctoral student will employ computational approaches to examine how individual perception and cognition of environmental features influences real-world decisions and behaviors. New insights will be provided regarding the theoretical and practical facets of urban behaviors via empirically driven cognitive models. The project will provide new information and insights for planners and policy makers, because it will address larger societal questions regarding the appropriate redesign of urban spaces in order to address larger environmental, economic, and public health issues. Findings of the project also will increase knowledge of how agent-based modeling can be used by the stakeholders and the public to evaluate the impacts of redevelopment on both individual citizens and the community at large. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.This project will approach pedestrian-oriented redevelopment from a computational, human-centered perspective, which will offer new insights into the multiple ways designed space is perceived and how those perceptions are translated into individual spatial behaviors. Pedestrian-oriented redevelopment is often understood to be a simple, solution-based approach to address larger structural and social issues of the city. Transforming existing street infrastructure is not a straightforward process, however, because of embedded automobile-oriented perspectives. This project will focus on three core questions: (1) How can data about individual differences regarding environmental cognition be used in the development of a pedestrian movement model? (2) How does the development of agent cognition aid in the credibility of real-world pedestrian movement models? (3) What key design variables in urban redevelopment projects emerge from cognitively driven pedestrian movement models? The doctoral student will use data generated from psychometric tests of environmental cognition as he develops agent-based spatial models. The outputs of the models will provide new information regarding how small changes to the urban environment could impact real-world decision making and behaviors. Examining and modeling individual cognitive processes in urban spaces will provide a rigorous, data-driven approach to answer questions both about individual agency as well as about the structure of the planned urban environment.