The impact of geometric and land use elements on the perceived pleasantness of urban layouts

Abstract

This article presents a model to estimate the impact of geometric and land use elements on citizens’ perception of urban layout pleasantness. An ordinal regression cumulative link mixed model with those elements as regressors is proposed and calibrated using data from an online survey. Results show that landscape building height and density of green areas are the factors that most impact the perception of pleasantness. Based on the model, a methodology to derive pleasantness mean scores for a city is also proposed and applied to a case study. The methodology allows for benchmarking the pleasantness of different cities or comparing neighborhoods within a city. It can be used both as an urban evaluation tool and a decision-aid for city expansion programs.

Do We Live Where It Is Pleasant? Correlates of Perceived Pleasantness with Socioeconomic Variables

“…Combined approaches include mostly landscape aesthetics indicators, e.g., [29], who developed beauty indexes and also distinguished landscape type; the morphologic scenic beauty estimation model of [64]; an aesthetic assessment approach [65]; and modelling of the aesthetics of urban-rural fringes [66]. Models that use geometric and land-use elements include [12] who used field data to obtain a pleasantness indicator, the street quality indexes of [37,67,68], the path model of neighborhood satisfaction of [69], and the walkability analysis of [70].…”

“…This article builds on the research developed by Sousa et al [12], which estimated the impact of land use and geometric elements on the citizen's perception of the pleasantness of urban layouts using an Ordinal Regression Cumulative Link Mixed Model (CLMM). The methodology was created to benchmark and compare the pleasantness of different neighborhoods within a city or between different cities and as a decision tool for neighborhood regeneration or city expansion programs [12]. This research applied the CLMM model to the center-south region of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, a typical global south city, and Coimbra, Portugal, a representative city of the global north.…”

“…Therefore, the significance of the built environment is vital for public policies as it impacts the quality of life [10,11]. In general, the urban landscape does not always resemble what people think of as a pleasant physical environment [12]. Thus, to wage against the creation of unpleasant and unsustainable physical environments, the built environment and public policies have a crucial role in improving the quality of life and creating more sustainable and pleasant cities.…”

“…The human perception of urban pleasantness is an important subject in spatial planning, environmental psychology, and architecture [12,[27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40], and has been an active research topic in recent decades [41][42][43]. Generally, the built environment is important for improving well-being and achieving a higher quality of life and sustainable future development [10].…”

“…On the other hand, the quality of life in slums is lower than in other urban settlements [57,58]. Measuring the perceived pleasantness of the urban environment by resorting to physical elements alone (e.g., geometric and land use, as in [12]) leaves aside socioeconomic factors that affect the quality of life, making it important to investigate whether and how the former elements correlate with the latter factors and how this interaction impacts one's choice of living location. This research presents a first step towards identifying those correlations.…”