Windowscapes: A Study of Landscape Preferences in an Urban Situation

Abstract

Landscape plays a crucial role in modern life for urban dwellers even though the majority of their time is spent indoors. In this context, vision is the dominant sense that connects urban residents to landscapes. The visual quality of urban environments can, consequently, have a great influence on the quality of life. But how can visual quality be assessed and quantified? Research into urban landscape preferences is relatively limited, and there are significant shortcomings with the methods that have been used. For example, the method of asking people to rate photographs of scenes cannot capture in its entirety the subjective value of urban environments as experienced daily. This thesis presents a novel method, Active Perception Technique (APT), to measure visual preferences for everyday urban scenes. Windowscape is used as a convenient, useful tool to sample urban landscapes. In addition to photographic evidence, APT uses graphic responses where participants are asked to draw from memory what they recall of their windowscapes. APT is designed to identify the most and least visually preferred features of urban windowscapes, and hence how to combine common urban features to predict preferences for windowscapes. The method is demonstrated by studying a sample of people in both their home and work environments. APT produced several original results. As one might expect, natural features of urban windowscapes were preferred over built aspects; however, some natural features contributed more strongly to overall preference than others. Preferences for some features were found to differ across home and workplace windowscapes. Personal association with features was also found to effect visual preferences. Results obtained from APT could be useful for policy makers, and planners to enhance the visual quality of built environments. APT may have other uses; including examining the effects of a planning intervention. Furthermore, it can show how landscape preferences differ between particular populations, e.g. children, the elderly and tourists. Although preferences may encompass other visual dimensions of urban landscapes such as tranquillity and security, that have not been studied here, APT can be modified to measure these aspects too. Keywords: Urban landscape, Preferences, Windowscape, Active Perception Technique