Urban Scape
Mohammad Azad Ahmadi; Mehrdad Karimimoshaver; Saeid Alitajer
Abstract
Highlights The quality of urban views leaves desirable or undesirable emotional responses on people. City is a homogeneous or heterogeneous network of diversity of urban views to upgrade or diminish citizen's emotions. Introduction The appearance of a city can influence the creation of good or ...
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Highlights The quality of urban views leaves desirable or undesirable emotional responses on people. City is a homogeneous or heterogeneous network of diversity of urban views to upgrade or diminish citizen's emotions. Introduction The appearance of a city can influence the creation of good or bad feelings to a large extent, depending on the structure and characteristics of the physical elements of the city. Citizens remember a city with an image of its urban spaces, especially the streets and squares, or of certain views, and it is their experience of the city’s physical environment that creates the image. On that basis, visual perception of the physical spaces of the city has a greater effect than other senses on the creation of different emotions in citizens. Appropriate urban views can play an effective role in the formation of clear, legible perceptions in people and in the acquisition of pleasant feelings about the city. Moreover, different perspectives can have different visual effects on the citizens of a city. A large number of studies have been carried out so far on various aspects of urban view. The present research analyzed urban views and their visual impacts on citizens, and sought to identify them along with methods of their categorization and explanation and conditions and factors that create and influence them. Urban views can have two major impacts on citizens in the form of likes and positive emotions or dislikes and negative emotions. Accordingly, attempts were made in this study to categorize the effects of urban views in general, which helped to draw the final conclusion. Theoretical framework Data collection and analysis was based in this study on an interpretive paradigm within a contextual examination of popular feedback from urban perspectives and expert views thereon. Hence, the main framework of this research was based on Jack Nasar’s definition of mental activity and emotion. He argues that the environment involves a large number of variables, and viewers go through some, pay attention to others, and evaluate what they see depending on internal and environmental factors. This assessment can include variable amounts of mental activity, and may also involve emotion, which is directly related to the structure of the form (visual environment), and requires little perception and mental activity. Methodology Due to the nature of this research, the main approach adopted in the design was a qualitative one using the grounded theory method, based on Corbin and Strauss’ approach, including open coding, axial coding, and selective coding data analysis. Other important reasons besides the comprehensive nature of the research included the nature of the research questions and the lack of an established theory on classification of urban views. Attempts were made here to step into the participants’ world and observe the subject from their point of view, to achieve new discoveries in the field, and to develop empirical knowledge in the field. The researcher first selected the sources of information and observation, and then used data from the participants for exploration and completion of the final model. The data were collected through library and field studies, interviews, and semi-structured questionnaires. The population and the participants were selected using theoretical sampling, where sampling continues until the data are saturated. The participants in this research included residents of and experts in Sanandaj. Results and discussion The results of the research showed the selective categories of observation effects and emotional responses including excitement, relaxation, pleasantness, and communication. Moreover, the causal conditions that create urban views, the contextual conditions, and the intervening conditions and their effects were obtained. The relationship between these categories and the outcome of the research was formulated and presented in a comprehensive model. The final core category was also summarized in the statement The city is a homogeneous or heterogeneous network of diverse urban views developed to upgrade or diminish citizens’ emotions. Conclusion The study demonstrated that a large number of factors are involved in identification and analysis of an urban view, in isolation and with respect to each other. Therefore, an urban view is highly complex, and is not easy to compare to another, with many factors involved to be examined and analyzed. It is better for the effects of different views on a city to be proportionate, so that their effects on citizens are desirable and balanced in the long run. For example, axial views may evoke a sense of dynamism or boredom in citizens, but broad or panoramic views may be exhilarating. According to the principle of diversity and complexity in aesthetics, these effects had better be combined, intertwined, and coexistent in a balanced manner for citizens’ different applications in response to their different emotional and spiritual states.
Urban Scape
Mohammad Azad Ahmadi; Mehrdad Karimi Moshaver
Abstract
Today, the issue of visibility assessment and visual impact (dominance) of a building on its surrounding context is considered as one of the most important issues of urban landscape. Accordingly, this paper analyzes the visibility of two high-rise buildings in the center and west of Sanandaj using raw ...
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Today, the issue of visibility assessment and visual impact (dominance) of a building on its surrounding context is considered as one of the most important issues of urban landscape. Accordingly, this paper analyzes the visibility of two high-rise buildings in the center and west of Sanandaj using raw input data and processing them by GIS and ArcGis 10. For the visibility analysis in urban landscape, the mutual visibility between high-rise building and its surrounding area is calculated. This is done traditionally by taking photos from urban areas. However, in this method, the whole region is studied by considering all points and places. The available vegetation such as trees with an approximate transparency ratio is considered to obtain more accurate results. Also, for better evaluation of differences between the amount and trend of visibility, the areas around both buildings (region number 1 is relatively flat and has a river-valley with low depth and mild slope; region number 2 involves dune hills) were classified into the close, intermediate and far fields. The visibility of these two high-rise buildings in their surrounding areas is in the form of output GIS images which is calculated separately for both buildings and all their floors. It means that for building number 1, which has 17 floors, 17 output maps of visibility to surrounding areas are obtained by the software. Also, for building number 2 with 14 floors, 14 output visibility maps are obtained. The findings show that visibility trend of different floors of these two buildings is not a constant and linear trend, it has variations in some points. Among these points, visibility and its effect, relative to surrounding areas, is more important than other floors in the triple fields. The points where visibility curve has track change, steep change and sudden increase show the greater importance of their visibility and their relative dominance than other floors. These floors can visually have more effect on their surrounding environment. Therefore, the design style of these particular floors (milestones in the visibility curve) in high-rise buildings can be important. The changes in floors visibility trend and their values were different for the two buildings. By evaluating the related diagrams, the reasons for this difference were found in three cases: first, the difference in average height of buildings around of two buildings; second, the difference between the tilt around the two buildings; and third, the dune hill in region number 2. Finally, we can say that visibility analysis is considered to be a tool for modeling the visibility in planning high-rise buildings. Before constructing such buildings, visibility analysis can be an effective method to estimate that a floor or an apartment will or will not have a good view after completion. Therefore, this tool can be used to investigate the positive or negative value of a region. Also, the extent to which a building is or is not visible can be very important in decisions about determining the height of a building relative to its surrounding texture (especially in cities with historically valuable texture and touristic landscape).
