Evaluating Jogging Routes in Mass Models

Designers and Urban Planners use various tools and metrics to help guide their decisions. Evaluating an urban environment based on distance to amenities (i.e., a source and destination) is only part of the movement experience of an occupant. In recreational movement such as walking, jogging, and running, people plan a path in which the start and end point is the same. The route taken and the experience along this route has implications for the satisfaction of the occupant. This paper introduces a straightforward method of generating all possible routes via two waypoints that meet a user-defined criteria for the total length of the route based on travel speed and time. Two new evaluative metrics for the paths are introduced: the percentage of the path that is in shade as well as the percentage that contains the Sun in the glare range of a person. As the latter aspect is a function of direction, a directed graph is used to factor in the directionality of the recreational route. Similarly, the truest location of the person is required for evaluating the impact of the built environment so the sidewalk, rather than road centerlines, are used.