Spatial distribution of urban pollution: Civilizing urban traffic

This paper describes research linking pollution measurements at the street segment scale to previous work developing new configuration sensitive 'space syntax' models that describe and quantify the pattern properties of urban space at this scale. This 'space syntax' model can provide good predictions of both pedestrian and vehicular flows throughout a city, and is currently being used commercially to predict the effect on both pedestrian and vehicular traffic flows of major urban projects. The main task of the project was to devise a method of measuring urban pollution at the scale of the street segment, in a reliable, accurate and inexpensive way. The monitoring equipment has been developed and measures carbon monoxide (CO), temperature, relative humidity, light level, and wind speed at 6 min intervals. This paper reports early results from a small number of these instruments. The main findings are that large differences in pollutant levels are found over small spatial distances and that pollutant concentrations are highly dependent on local wind speed.