Bettering the Functionality of the Streets in the Historic Urban Areas: A Quantitative Method of Identification

Abstract Nowadays as the socioeconomic and tourism development, the streets in many historic urban areas, particularly the historic streets build in the past, are already being challenged and overloaded by the rapid growth of mobility of diverse travelling purposes in daily life. However, due to the lack of reliable method of identifying the varied demands, the reasonable policies can be hardly formulated and implemented to address this emerging issue which instead is getting worse and even bringing some damages to the characteristics and values of the historic streets regarding historic urban conservation. Therefore, the article conceptualizes and develops a quantitative method to identify the functions of the streets in historic urban areas. Through integrating the Analytic Hierarchy Process with GIS and data of various sources, the method constructs an overall framework and detailed processes for the street functional identification exemplified by three principal functions of protection, accessibility and service assumed by the streets in the historic urban areas. The feasibility of the method is also verified by applying it in the historic streets in the historic urban area of Shangqiu, China and also some advantages are also demonstrated compared with the conventional methodology of the urban conservation planning in addressing this issue, including the comprehensive inclusion and deeper understanding of the street functions, the accuracy of the quantitative approach, the coherence of the analytical process, and the adaptability to the potential indicators. Therefore, method serves as an alternative tool for bettering the functionality of streets in historic urban areas.