During rapid urbanization, streets were just constructed for traffic. And there were few holistic considerations about urban environmental equipment that interact with pedestrians directly. For better outdoor activities of pedestrians, urban environmental equipment should be investigated thoroughly and systematically.
To understand various aspects of urban environmental equipment, literature review is conducted. The concept of urban environmental equipment is specified as an element of urban environment system. Because there are so many elements in different hierarchical levels, it is not easy to grasp their structure and relationships among them. To solve this problem, systems theory is used as theoretical background to propose the conceptual design cognition model - a framework to view elements holistically and to find relationships among them.
The boundary of urban environment is specified as related laws and components are categorized in four groups: physical, human, operating, and constraint group. Three active factors --- authorities, manufacturers, and users that influence the design and maintenance of urban environmental equipment are selected and their relationships are studied through field studies.
In this study, the conceptual design cognition model of urban environmental equipment is proposed. And influential active factors are selected and investigated for suggesting the maintenance structure of urban environmental equipment.
