Andres Sevtsuk
Biographic Data
| ID | 154339 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Andres Sevtsuk |
| GIVEN NAMES | Andres |
| FAMILY NAME | Sevtsuk |
| SIGNATURE | SEVTSUK A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5098-9636 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 64 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Advancing Pedestrian Models: A Comparative Review and Vision for the Future
A sidewalk-level urban heat risk assessment framework using pedestrian mobility and urban microclimate modeling
Climate change and the associated increase in heat-related hazards pose a pressing threat to urban residents’ health and well-being. People, when walking in particular, are at risk of experiencing heat stress as they navigate urban environments. This study proposes a novel heat risk assessment framework combining pedestrian mobility modeling with urban microclimate modeling. Using this framework, we assessed pedestrian heat-related exposure and r…
Modeling pedestrian activity in cities with urban network analysis
The global climate-change crisis, along with public health and economic competitiveness challenges in cities around the world have underscored the need for analytic tools to examine the relationship between city design and sustainable mobility. Car-centered travel demand models and land-use-transportation interaction models have historically analyzed zone-to-zone trips along major roadways, largely omitting pedestrian and bicycle trips and creati…
The BostonWalks study: A longitudinal travel survey using smartphone tracking
This paper introduces the BostonWalks (BWS) study, detailing its methodology, the resulting dataset, and an initial analysis. The BWS study is a smartphone-based GNSS-tracking study in the Boston metropolitan area, designed to generate an up-to-date dataset on travel behavior, with a particular focus on non-auto travel behavior and its representativeness across all population segments. The dataset encompasses approximately 155,000 trips from 990 …
Madina Python package: Scalable urban network analysis for modeling pedestrian and bicycle trips in cities
There is growing interest around sustainable mobility in cities, particularly pedestrian mobility, but methodological limitations and scarcity of software tools to analyze the dynamics between pedestrians and urban land uses have limited both research on and policy-relevant planning applications of pedestrian modeling. To address these challenges, we introduce Madina , a new Python package for modeling pedestrian and cycling trips along spatial n…
Clarity or confusion: A review of computer vision street attributes in urban studies and planning
The acceleration of urban imagery data analysis, driven by computer vision (CV), has created noteworthy opportunities for urban studies and planning. Data on street environments with high granularity derived from geo-tagged street views allow urban researchers to obtain geospatial data on greenery, pavement materials, and dimensions, building facades, urban furniture, lighting, vehicle presence, etc. However, how such attributes have been classif…
Hot and bothered: Exploring the effect of heat on pedestrian route choice behavior and accessibility
Although many cities are incentivizing non-auto modes of transportation in response to the climate crisis, their sustainable mobility transition efforts are being challenged by the rising intensity and frequency of heatwaves. Pedestrians are exposed to high levels of heat stress on hot days, which may reduce their willingness to walk. It is thus important to understand how heat affects pedestrian behavior and accessibility, so that climate mitiga…
Pedestrian-oriented development in Beirut: A framework for estimating urban design impacts on pedestrian flows through modeling, participatory design, and scenario analysis
As municipalities are setting ambitious targets to increase non-motorized transportation mode shares, analytic frameworks for examining how such targets will be met become increasingly important. In this article, we update the Urban Network Analysis pedestrian modeling framework designed to link land use and urban development changes with pedestrian mobility outcomes by introducing new methods for capturing the effects of street properties on ped…
Mapping the walk: A scalable computer vision approach for generating sidewalk network datasets from aerial imagery
Towards an equity-centred model of sustainable mobility: Integrating inequality and segregation challenges in the green mobility transition
Urban planners and transportation policy makers around the world are proposing initiatives for greener mobility, particularly by promoting higher urban development densities, active transport modes, and non-auto access to destinations. This Special Issue engages critically with the sustainable mobility and 15-Minute City concepts by outlining an Equitable Sustainable Mobility Model that integrates non-auto accessibility improvements with key dail…
Exploring how socioeconomic status affects neighbourhood environments’ effects on obesity risks: A longitudinal study in Singapore
Research on how socioeconomic status interacts with neighbourhood characteristics to influence disparities in obesity outcomes is currently limited by residential segregation-induced structural confounding, a lack of empirical studies outside the U.S. and other ‘Western’ contexts, and an over-reliance on cross-sectional analyses. This study addresses these challenges by examining how socioeconomic status modifies the effect of accumulated exposur…
The role of turns in pedestrian route choice: A clarification
Spatial structure of workplace and communication between colleagues: A study of E-mail exchange and spatial relatedness on the MIT campus
How does the spatial structure of work environments affect social interactions among workers? Building on prior studies of both physical and electronic communication networks, we present the results of a study conducted on the MIT campus using an anonymized dataset of e-mail communication to examine how spatial relatedness between faculty, staff, and researchers' office locations impact E-mail communication between them. Our findings suggest that…
A tale of two Americas: Socio-economic mobility gaps within and across American cities before and during the pandemic
We examine differences in mobility outcomes between residents of highest and lowest socio-economic index (SEI) at the Census block group (CBG) level in nine major US cities prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic. While low-SEI groups generally traveled shorter distances but visited more city-wide CBGs before the pandemic, high-SEI residents universally reduced their mobility to a greater extent during the pandemic. Although high-SEI residents …
Estimating Pedestrian Flows on Street Networks: Revisiting the Betweenness Index
Problem, research strategy, and findings City governments and planners alike commonly seek to increase pedestrian activity on city streets as part of broader sustainability, community building, and economic development strategies. Though walkability has received ample attention in planning literature, most planners still lack practical methods for predicting how development proposals could affect pedestrian activity on specific streets or public …
Does metropolitan form affect transportation sustainability? Evidence from US metropolitan areas
In this paper, we examine transportation sustainability in American metropolitan areas using transportation-related CO 2 emissions, public transit accessibility, and commuting times as indicators. Though variations in these indicators may stem from historic contexts, policies, institutional arrangements, social and cultural origins, the spatial structure of metropolitan areas—in particular their formal characteristics—may also be a contributing f…
Street Commerce: Creating Vibrant Urban Sidewalks
Street commerce is deeply intertwined with myriad contemporary urban visions and planning goals and has become an increasingly prominent issue in urban areas. In Street Commerce , Andres Sevtsuk offers a comprehensive analysis of the issues involved in implementing successful street commerce and suggests innovative solutions
The amenity mix of urban neighborhoods
Street Commerce: Creating Vibrant Urban Sidewalks
Patronage of urban commercial clusters: A network-based extension of the Huff model for balancing location and size
We introduce a version of the Huff retail expenditure model, where retail demand depends on households’ access to retail centers. Household-level survey data suggest that total retail visits in a system of retail centers depends on the relative location pattern of stores and customers. This dependence opens up an important question—could overall visits to retail centers be increased with a more efficient spatial configuration of centers in planne…
Pedestrian accessibility in grid layouts: The role of block, plot and street dimensions
Research on urban form and walkability suggests that on average smaller blocks are better for pedestrians. We explore how block sizes, plot dimensions and street widths affect pedestrian accessibility in regular grids. Pedestrian accessibility is captured by the gravity index, which is proportional to the number of neighbouring plots that can be reached within a given walking radius and inversely proportional to the travel costs involved. Pedestr…
Analysis and Planning of Urban Networks
Location and Agglomeration: The Distribution of Retail and Food Businesses in Dense Urban Environments
This article analyzes location patterns of retail and food establishments, whose presence constitutes an important aspect of livable and walkable neighborhoods. Using approximately fourteen thousand buildings on the street network of Cambridge and Somerville, Massachusetts, as units of analysis, this article tests five hypotheses about retail locations found in previous literature and estimates the impacts of different location characteristics fo…
Urban network analysis. A new toolbox for ArcGIS
Does Urban Mobility Have a Daily Routine? Learning from the Aggregate Data of Mobile Networks
Does the distribution of Rome's population follow routine hourly, daily, or weekly patterns? And if it does, how do such patterns vary in different parts of the city? This paper reports on our investigation of the aggregate patterns of urban mobility in Rome, Italy for which we used novel data from a mobile phone operator. Unlike research that chartered urban mobility through individual travel surveys, our research determined the aggregate distri…
Location and Agglomeration: The Distribution of Retail and Food Businesses in Dense Urban Environments
This article analyzes location patterns of retail and food establishments, whose presence constitutes an important aspect of livable and walkable neighborhoods. Using approximately fourteen thousand buildings on the street network of Cambridge and Somerville, Massachusetts, as units of analysis, this article tests five hypotheses about retail locations found in previous literature and estimates the impacts of different location characteristics fo…
Pedestrian accessibility in grid layouts: The role of block, plot and street dimensions
Research on urban form and walkability suggests that on average smaller blocks are better for pedestrians. We explore how block sizes, plot dimensions and street widths affect pedestrian accessibility in regular grids. Pedestrian accessibility is captured by the gravity index, which is proportional to the number of neighbouring plots that can be reached within a given walking radius and inversely proportional to the travel costs involved. Pedestr…
The amenity mix of urban neighborhoods
Towards an equity-centred model of sustainable mobility: Integrating inequality and segregation challenges in the green mobility transition
Urban planners and transportation policy makers around the world are proposing initiatives for greener mobility, particularly by promoting higher urban development densities, active transport modes, and non-auto access to destinations. This Special Issue engages critically with the sustainable mobility and 15-Minute City concepts by outlining an Equitable Sustainable Mobility Model that integrates non-auto accessibility improvements with key dail…
The role of turns in pedestrian route choice: A clarification
Madina Python package: Scalable urban network analysis for modeling pedestrian and bicycle trips in cities
There is growing interest around sustainable mobility in cities, particularly pedestrian mobility, but methodological limitations and scarcity of software tools to analyze the dynamics between pedestrians and urban land uses have limited both research on and policy-relevant planning applications of pedestrian modeling. To address these challenges, we introduce Madina , a new Python package for modeling pedestrian and cycling trips along spatial n…
A tale of two Americas: Socio-economic mobility gaps within and across American cities before and during the pandemic
We examine differences in mobility outcomes between residents of highest and lowest socio-economic index (SEI) at the Census block group (CBG) level in nine major US cities prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic. While low-SEI groups generally traveled shorter distances but visited more city-wide CBGs before the pandemic, high-SEI residents universally reduced their mobility to a greater extent during the pandemic. Although high-SEI residents …
Does Urban Mobility Have a Daily Routine? Learning from the Aggregate Data of Mobile Networks
Does the distribution of Rome's population follow routine hourly, daily, or weekly patterns? And if it does, how do such patterns vary in different parts of the city? This paper reports on our investigation of the aggregate patterns of urban mobility in Rome, Italy for which we used novel data from a mobile phone operator. Unlike research that chartered urban mobility through individual travel surveys, our research determined the aggregate distri…
Urban network analysis. A new toolbox for ArcGIS
Analysis and Planning of Urban Networks
Location and Agglomeration: The Distribution of Retail and Food Businesses in Dense Urban Environments
This article analyzes location patterns of retail and food establishments, whose presence constitutes an important aspect of livable and walkable neighborhoods. Using approximately fourteen thousand buildings on the street network of Cambridge and Somerville, Massachusetts, as units of analysis, this article tests five hypotheses about retail locations found in previous literature and estimates the impacts of different location characteristics fo…
Pedestrian accessibility in grid layouts: The role of block, plot and street dimensions
Research on urban form and walkability suggests that on average smaller blocks are better for pedestrians. We explore how block sizes, plot dimensions and street widths affect pedestrian accessibility in regular grids. Pedestrian accessibility is captured by the gravity index, which is proportional to the number of neighbouring plots that can be reached within a given walking radius and inversely proportional to the travel costs involved. Pedestr…
Patronage of urban commercial clusters: A network-based extension of the Huff model for balancing location and size
We introduce a version of the Huff retail expenditure model, where retail demand depends on households’ access to retail centers. Household-level survey data suggest that total retail visits in a system of retail centers depends on the relative location pattern of stores and customers. This dependence opens up an important question—could overall visits to retail centers be increased with a more efficient spatial configuration of centers in planne…
Street Commerce: Creating Vibrant Urban Sidewalks
Street commerce is deeply intertwined with myriad contemporary urban visions and planning goals and has become an increasingly prominent issue in urban areas. In Street Commerce , Andres Sevtsuk offers a comprehensive analysis of the issues involved in implementing successful street commerce and suggests innovative solutions
The amenity mix of urban neighborhoods
Street Commerce: Creating Vibrant Urban Sidewalks
Estimating Pedestrian Flows on Street Networks: Revisiting the Betweenness Index
Problem, research strategy, and findings City governments and planners alike commonly seek to increase pedestrian activity on city streets as part of broader sustainability, community building, and economic development strategies. Though walkability has received ample attention in planning literature, most planners still lack practical methods for predicting how development proposals could affect pedestrian activity on specific streets or public …
Does metropolitan form affect transportation sustainability? Evidence from US metropolitan areas
In this paper, we examine transportation sustainability in American metropolitan areas using transportation-related CO 2 emissions, public transit accessibility, and commuting times as indicators. Though variations in these indicators may stem from historic contexts, policies, institutional arrangements, social and cultural origins, the spatial structure of metropolitan areas—in particular their formal characteristics—may also be a contributing f…
Exploring how socioeconomic status affects neighbourhood environments’ effects on obesity risks: A longitudinal study in Singapore
Research on how socioeconomic status interacts with neighbourhood characteristics to influence disparities in obesity outcomes is currently limited by residential segregation-induced structural confounding, a lack of empirical studies outside the U.S. and other ‘Western’ contexts, and an over-reliance on cross-sectional analyses. This study addresses these challenges by examining how socioeconomic status modifies the effect of accumulated exposur…
The role of turns in pedestrian route choice: A clarification
Spatial structure of workplace and communication between colleagues: A study of E-mail exchange and spatial relatedness on the MIT campus
How does the spatial structure of work environments affect social interactions among workers? Building on prior studies of both physical and electronic communication networks, we present the results of a study conducted on the MIT campus using an anonymized dataset of e-mail communication to examine how spatial relatedness between faculty, staff, and researchers' office locations impact E-mail communication between them. Our findings suggest that…
A tale of two Americas: Socio-economic mobility gaps within and across American cities before and during the pandemic
We examine differences in mobility outcomes between residents of highest and lowest socio-economic index (SEI) at the Census block group (CBG) level in nine major US cities prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic. While low-SEI groups generally traveled shorter distances but visited more city-wide CBGs before the pandemic, high-SEI residents universally reduced their mobility to a greater extent during the pandemic. Although high-SEI residents …
Mapping the walk: A scalable computer vision approach for generating sidewalk network datasets from aerial imagery
Towards an equity-centred model of sustainable mobility: Integrating inequality and segregation challenges in the green mobility transition
Urban planners and transportation policy makers around the world are proposing initiatives for greener mobility, particularly by promoting higher urban development densities, active transport modes, and non-auto access to destinations. This Special Issue engages critically with the sustainable mobility and 15-Minute City concepts by outlining an Equitable Sustainable Mobility Model that integrates non-auto accessibility improvements with key dail…
Clarity or confusion: A review of computer vision street attributes in urban studies and planning
The acceleration of urban imagery data analysis, driven by computer vision (CV), has created noteworthy opportunities for urban studies and planning. Data on street environments with high granularity derived from geo-tagged street views allow urban researchers to obtain geospatial data on greenery, pavement materials, and dimensions, building facades, urban furniture, lighting, vehicle presence, etc. However, how such attributes have been classif…
Hot and bothered: Exploring the effect of heat on pedestrian route choice behavior and accessibility
Although many cities are incentivizing non-auto modes of transportation in response to the climate crisis, their sustainable mobility transition efforts are being challenged by the rising intensity and frequency of heatwaves. Pedestrians are exposed to high levels of heat stress on hot days, which may reduce their willingness to walk. It is thus important to understand how heat affects pedestrian behavior and accessibility, so that climate mitiga…
Pedestrian-oriented development in Beirut: A framework for estimating urban design impacts on pedestrian flows through modeling, participatory design, and scenario analysis
As municipalities are setting ambitious targets to increase non-motorized transportation mode shares, analytic frameworks for examining how such targets will be met become increasingly important. In this article, we update the Urban Network Analysis pedestrian modeling framework designed to link land use and urban development changes with pedestrian mobility outcomes by introducing new methods for capturing the effects of street properties on ped…
A sidewalk-level urban heat risk assessment framework using pedestrian mobility and urban microclimate modeling
Climate change and the associated increase in heat-related hazards pose a pressing threat to urban residents’ health and well-being. People, when walking in particular, are at risk of experiencing heat stress as they navigate urban environments. This study proposes a novel heat risk assessment framework combining pedestrian mobility modeling with urban microclimate modeling. Using this framework, we assessed pedestrian heat-related exposure and r…
Modeling pedestrian activity in cities with urban network analysis
The global climate-change crisis, along with public health and economic competitiveness challenges in cities around the world have underscored the need for analytic tools to examine the relationship between city design and sustainable mobility. Car-centered travel demand models and land-use-transportation interaction models have historically analyzed zone-to-zone trips along major roadways, largely omitting pedestrian and bicycle trips and creati…
The BostonWalks study: A longitudinal travel survey using smartphone tracking
This paper introduces the BostonWalks (BWS) study, detailing its methodology, the resulting dataset, and an initial analysis. The BWS study is a smartphone-based GNSS-tracking study in the Boston metropolitan area, designed to generate an up-to-date dataset on travel behavior, with a particular focus on non-auto travel behavior and its representativeness across all population segments. The dataset encompasses approximately 155,000 trips from 990 …
Madina Python package: Scalable urban network analysis for modeling pedestrian and bicycle trips in cities
There is growing interest around sustainable mobility in cities, particularly pedestrian mobility, but methodological limitations and scarcity of software tools to analyze the dynamics between pedestrians and urban land uses have limited both research on and policy-relevant planning applications of pedestrian modeling. To address these challenges, we introduce Madina , a new Python package for modeling pedestrian and cycling trips along spatial n…
Advancing Pedestrian Models: A Comparative Review and Vision for the Future
Engineering (18 works) · Geography (18 works) · Transport engineering (17 works) · Urban Transport and Accessibility (17 works) · Computer Science (15 works) · Business (10 works) · Civil engineering (10 works) · Pedestrian (10 works) · Urban Design and Spatial Analysis (10 works) · Human Mobility and Location-Based Analysis (7 works)