ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN CLEANLINESS

SUMMARY

Liveable Urban Streets, Google books, 1976

According to the survey ‘Conditions of street’ conducted by US annual housing survey
mention by Donald Appleyard in his book, ‘Liveable Urban Street’, says that, trash and litter
is 12 % in the US, whereas as much as 25- 30% in the Negro household and22% in the
spanish household.
It is the appearance of the street that bothers most of the people ( 60 percent ) ,
and specifically the trash and dirt ( 63 percent ) , the dogs ( 58 percent ) , and abandoned
cars ( 45 percent ). The litter seems to be out of control . It is caused mostly by
families on the street, and the Department of Public Works do not help . The city fails to have
it cleaned up and the poor families cannot afford to pay garbage bills . The afternoon winds
blow it everywhere.

In San Francisco Mission Streets, people opinion:

-Just the general litter and trash, everybody using it as a dumping pile for their old
newspapers, and that dump on the corner. They come around delivering these advertising
circulars, and dump them in the driveway.

-Dirty litter in the street. Dogs are not curbed- the streets are filthy.
Seems there’s a lot of litter on the street, people use the street to dispose of the house
garbage. There’s a laxity on the part of the city enforcing regulations and sending cleaners
often. There’s a can on the corner , it’s the local dumping ground, people put window frames
and chairs in it because they cannot afford to pay garbage bills.

-People buy soda, their snacks, they drop their can and chips packet on their street but
neighbors use it for their own household garbage.

-The Department of Public works came in several weeks ago to put in pipes, all the soot and
gravel still lie there but the street cleaner did not clean it up. If it was a high class
neighborhood they would clean it up, but down here as long as they don’t take those things,
the dirt is in the streets.

PETS
People want to walk their dogs because they don’t like to clean their houses.Dogs make the
streets very dirty. One solution is to have toilet parks for the dogs.

ABANDONED CARS
Cars that are abandoned or maybe tolen stay for a very long time on streets.

An International Multi-Disciplinary Journal, Ethiopia, October 2009

Definitions on litter and littering abound. Litter is waste disposed of in the wrong place by
unlawful human action and can vary in size of incident, occurrence and items. They are
materials of different types occasioned by malicious, careless or accidental intent and are
generally disposed of illegally rather than lawfully. Littering on the other hand, is an act that
amounts to disposing solid waste inappropriately especially along major roads and streets .
This indecent behaviour certainly affects everyone’s quality of life, gives a visitor a bad
first impression and causes environmental blight.

An Approach to Litter Generation and Littering Practices in a

Mexico City Neighborhood, 2012
The presence and accumulation of litter in public spaces is a widely recognized
environmental issue in diverse countries because of its impact on different areas, which can
be classified as follows:
1) Aesthetic blight, since litter is aesthetically unattractive and its tendency to fly or move
about decreases scenic potential and is a public nuisance.
2) Health hazard impact. A potential health hazard to humans are the rotting contents of
bottles, tin cans [2] and wrappers that are scavenged by house pets.
3) The combination of high litter loads and high rainfall plus unreliable maintenance
programs frequently blocks sewer systems with the consequent risk of flooding.
4) The presence of litter in public spaces increases refuse collection costs.

Some litter can be counted as recyclable waste. Public attitude towards recyclable
municipal solid waste (RMSW) generation, generators’ perceptions, and quantification of
RMSW in streets were examined in a Mexico City neighborhood, where litter presence
causes major environmental problems affecting the population year after year.
Laziness, lack of vigilance by municipal authorities, no litter bins in streets, and imitation
were the main causes identified by interviewees as reasons for littering. Potential litter
generators may be of any age, educational level or income. Interviewees’ perception of
RMSW generation was compared with item counts in the neighborhood studied.

Rethinking the Spaces of Waste Management

Infrastructure: towards integrated urban strategies
to avoid urban solid waste in contemporary city, 2018
The issue of waste comes from the unsustainability of a development model that alters
environmental and social balances. If current trends continue, the world may see a five-fold
increase in waste generation by the year 2025.
There is a need to examine the issue of solid waste management by an architectural
perspective.Historically, flows of resources have always had a spatial and aesthetic
consideration, producing new urban imaginaries: aqueducts, mills, fountains, power plants,
even railway stations constitute an architectural heritage of public interest,
considered as an integral part of urban and territorial morphology.

The capacity to learn from trash can help to design a new generation of facilities and spaces,
aiming to recover suburban areas and to re-establish a lost ecological balance.

THEMES AND PARAMETERS

● Some of the themes that can be looked into for the topic:
● Behavior of people in a clean street compared with the behavior of people in a
littered street.
● Mindset of people for throwing garbage on the streets.
● Changes that can be seen in urban activities due to littered streets.
 ● Changes observed in human behavior if a place littered on a street is cleaned and
replaced with street furniture.
● Change in behavior of people if there is a proper waste management system and
essential street furniture like dustbins.

PARAMETERS
An International Multi-Disciplinary Journal, Ethiopia,2009

Liveable urban street, Google book

● Age group of people who tend to litter the streets by throwing wastes like wrappers,
packets, cigarette butts.
● Age group of people who throw domestic garbage on streets and make it a
dumpyard.
● Education qualification of the people
● Gender
● Reason behind the behavior of littering the place
● Waste management systems of the street.
● Availability of dustbins at regular intervals on the street.
● Measure of traffic on that particular street.
● Measure of pedestrians who use that particular street and the reason they use it
regularly.
● Problems faced by neighbouring homes in terms of smell, health issues etc.
● Effect of street garbage on animals like cows, dogs, buffaloes. (consuming
non-edible matter might choke them)

TOOLS, METHODS AND TECHNIQUES OF RESEARCH

An International Multi-Disciplinary Journal, Ethiopia,2009

Liveable urban street, Google book

An Approach to Litter Generation and Littering Practices in a

Mexico City Neighborhood, 2012
● SURVEY
➔ Reason behind garbage dumping in a particular place.
➔ Time of the day when garbage is disposed off.
➔ Neighbourhood homes and their point of view towards the same.
● GRAPH
➔ Comparative graph showing garbage disposal of a street which is active with
traffic and pedestrians and a street which is not much active.
➔ Graph showing illegal dumping and regularity of the collection of the dump by
the municipality
➔ Graph showing the type of people who litter the streets in terms of education
qualification, age etc.
➔ Graph showing the type of litter that is disposed.(biodegradable or
non-biodegradable)
 ● FORMS OR INTERVIEWS
➔ Forms about how residents feel their street is presently.
➔ Forms abouts how the residents want their streets to be.
➔ Residents concerns about street littering.
➔ Interviews about how the other residents of their street are.
➔ How they feel living in their street
➔ Vehicular movement in their street

CASE STUDIES FROM THE LITERATURE

U.S. Annual Housing Survey 1973
● Negro households
● Spanish households
● San Francisco, trash , litter , and broken sidewalks on Mission streets
● Mexico City
● Nigeria

RESEARCH GAPS
After studies and understanding the research techniques and case studies from different
parts of the world, the research gap would be explorations of urban forms and necessary
street furniture in the streets and observe and compare the behavior of people before and
after.
The research gap would also be how the urban form is maintained by the people of the
street in the long run.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
https://www.ajol.info/index.php/afrrev/article/view/51149 EE Nkwocha, IO Okeoma - African
research review, 2009 - ajol.info

https://www.alleghenyfront.org/the-psychology-of-littering/

https://www.google.co.in/books/edition/Liveable_Urban_Streets/6xlJRiZ8dRYC?hl=en&gbpv
=1&dq=urban+streets+and+cleanliness&pg=PA86&printsec

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-68345-4_18
MS Rad, A von Kaenel, A Droux, F Tieche… - … Conference on computer …, 2017 -
Springer