![]() ![]() The narrowed range of life activities meant that citizen travel gradually changed from using the urban public transport system to walking or cycling ( Barbieri et al., 2021). However, since studies have shown that the COVID-19 typically spreads rapidly through droplets among high-density human populations ( Jegan et al., 2021), the restriction of interpersonal interaction during the COVID-19 epidemic, in addition to people’s prevention awareness, could have changed street primary function into the dominant access space. ![]() Streets are the basic organizational units of urban life and structure, and pedestrian spaces are an important part of urban public spaces for walking, rest, communication, and playing ( Jacobs, 1993 Whyte, 1998 Ewing and Handy, 2009). These factors have highlighted the importance of outdoor activities on quality of life and raised concerns about the healthiness of urban open spaces. Since the onset of the COVID-19 epidemic, public health has been severely affected ( Giuntella et al., 2021 Pang et al., 2022) long periods of isolation and containment have prevented outdoor physical activity and caused a lack of social interaction, mental health challenges ( Ma et al., 2022), heterogeneous effects on sleep ( Ong et al., 2021), and increased depression ( Ghebreyesus, 2020). The COVID-19 epidemic broke out in December 2019 and soon became a global problem, causing nearly 15 million deaths by 2021 ( Grimley et al., 2022) directly or indirectly. Moreover, they enable environmental health quality optimisation of pedestrian spaces considering audio-visual indicators and approaches in the post-epidemic era. The findings provide references for better understanding the relationships between healthy experience and audio-visual perceptions. In terms of the combined audio-visual factors, acoustic comfort, the quantity of greening, annoyance, sky visibility, spatial scale, and building distance were examined as the determining factors affecting health evaluations, and 55.40% of the variance in health evaluations was explained by the soundscape and streetscape indicators. In contrast, soundscape indicators showed positive correlations with health evaluations, and acoustic comfort and noise annoyance, rather than sound preference and subjective loudness were associated with each health evaluation indicator. Positive health evaluations were observed when L Aeq was less than 55 dBA. There were negative correlations between L Aeq for traffic noise and health evaluations. In contrast, the rhythm and continuity of the street buildings had a greater effect on willingness to walk than the other health indicators. The imageability and openness of the streetscape were associated with each health evaluation indicator. The results showed that safety was rated the highest, and willingness to walk was evaluated as the lowest among health evaluation indicators. ![]() Five indicators reflecting psychological responses to environmental characteristics ( willingness to walk, relaxation, safety, beauty, and comprehensive comfort) were used to measure environmental health of pedestrian streets with traffic noise. This field investigation research in Dalian, China, examined the perceived audio-visual environment characteristics of urban pedestrian streets with traffic noise and their influences on the environmental health of the pedestrian streets. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected city dwellers’ physical and mental health and has raised concerns about the health of urban public spaces. ![]() 3Research Institute of Highway Ministry of Transport, Beijing, China.2National Environmental Protection Engineering and Technology Center for Road Traffic Noise Control, Beijing, China.1School of Architecture and Fine Arts, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, Liaoning, China.Xinxin Ren 1,2 *, Peng Wei 1, Qiran Wang 1, Wei Sun 1, Minmin Yuan 2,3, Shegang Shao 2,3, Dandan Zhu 1 and Yishan Xue 1 ![]()
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