Comparative Analysis of Pedestrian Sidewalk Standards in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

Abstract

Walkability and pedestrian accessibility are central to sustainable urban development but remain particularly challenging in cold-climate cities, where thermal comfort and seasonal conditions strongly influence mobility patterns. In Ulaanbaatar, a rapidly urbanizing city with an extreme continental climate (mean annual temperature of −1.3°C), pedestrian infrastructure is constrained by vehicle-oriented street design and limited right-of-way allocation. Although Mongolia has adopted the national pedestrian planning standard UCS 0901B:2022, its spatial adequacy across different urban contexts has not been systematically evaluated. This study assesses pedestrian infrastructure across four representative street typologies—peri-urban (ger-area) redevelopment, commercial, modern residential, and institutional corridors—using comparative cross-sectional analysis combined with international benchmarking against nine global cities. The results identify pedestrian width as a key spatial determinant of functional pedestrian environments. Two critical thresholds, approximately 2.0 m and 2.5 m, are shown to govern the feasibility of buffer space and canopy-forming vegetation in cold-climate conditions. International comparisons indicate that pedestrian widths in Ulaanbaatar are approximately 40–60% narrower than typology-matched global references across all street categories. These findings highlight a systematic mismatch between current standards and functional spatial requirements. The study provides the first empirical evidence in Ulaanbaatar supporting the adoption of typology-specific pedestrian width targets and integrated green buffer requirements. It therefore recommends revising UCS 0901B:2022 to move beyond a single uniform minimum standard toward a more context-sensitive, performance-based framework for pedestrian planning in cold-climate cities.