M. Mashhood Arif Urban Planner

“The Perceptual Dimensions and Urban

Design”

Perceptual means the process of becoming aware of physical objects, phenomenon etc. through senses. Thus the perceptual dimension in urban design embraces the images, experiences and meanings that people attach to the built environment.

The Perceptual Dimension of urban design explores how people perceives environment and experience places

This chapter is divided in three main parts:

• Environmental perception

• Construction of place in terms of place identity, sense of place and placelessness

• Place differentiation and place theming

INTRODUCTION

“Environment perception is a way in which an individual perceive the environment.”

Environment has great impact on us and we have to perceive by our all senses. There is a marked distinction between sensation and perception which represents environment stimuli.

Sensation refers to human sensory system which could be all four senses or the sense of heat, balance and pain.

Perception is far more much than just sensing the environment. Perception is socially and culturally learned while sensation may be stimuli to everyone

Lang (1994:226-7) suggests an alternative that rather than focusing on removing negative concern the focus should be on increasing positive. E.g.: Birds’ sounds, children voices and the crunching of autumn leaves etc. He emphasizes that sound scope contributes as much as visual qualities. eg. waterfall, fountains can counter negative sounds like traffic noise.

ENVIRONMENTAL PERCEPTION

It was proposed by Lynch that environmental images were the result of two way process between the observer and the environment.

Thus place image is a combination of place identity and how the place is perceived by the individual (it includes the individual set of feelings about and impressions of the place)

Environmental images require three attributes according to Lynch:

• Identity

• Structure

• Meaning

According to Lynch, cities have districts, landmarks, paths, nodes and edges that were easily identifiable and easily grouped into an overall pattern that lead to what we call “image ability”

Image ability – it is the quality of a physical object which gives it a high probability of evoking a strong image in any given observer.

PLACE IMAGES

Mental understanding of the essence of the city that every individual creates after one is directly or indirectly colliding with the environment of the city. Projection of the distant images of the city that where built during often collisions in the past with the environment of the city that only partly are kept in the memory.

It includes various steps of visual survey. A visual survey in urban design is an examination of the form, appearance and composition of a city as well as evaluation of its assets and liabilities. Here these are in terms of area which is working and functioning well and that area are not functioning well. We need to be improved it.

Comparing Milan and Room, Milan was constructed by clearly connected paths relating to their city’s radial street pattern whereas Rooms was constructed around land marks and edges associated with the city’s historical buildings, its hills and the river Tiber.

BEYOND THE IMAGE OF CITY

• District: These are the medium-to-large areas which observes mentally enter inside of and have some common identifying character.

• Edges: These are linear elements either not used or considered by observers as paths and often forming boundaries between areas or linear breaks in continuity.

• Pathways: These are channels along which observer move like streets, walkways and transit etc. Path could be important feature in city images for several reasons including regular use, façade characteristics and dominance.

• Nodes: These are point references and which are the intensive foci. Nodes may be primarily junctions. Distinctive physical form is likely to make the node more memorable.

• Landmarks: Some landmarks are distant and are typically seen from many angles and from distance. Spatial prominence could establish some elements as landmarks by making the element visible from many locations.

LYNCH’S FIVE ELEMENTS

Champs Elysees: Certain paths are significant in supporting clear mental maps of cities or parts of cities.

Weymouth England: the sea edge is a powerful organizing element for coastal towns and cities.

“Symbolism is the practice of representing things with sign and giving them meaning.”

The symbolic role of buildings and environment is a key part of relationship between society and environment.

Reading an environment involves understanding how different things come to different people and how meanings change.

As society changes, so does signification.

Economic and commercial forces are highly influential in creating the symbolism of the built environment.

ENVIRONMENTAL MEANING AND SYMBOLISM

Sense of place takes into account “the social and geographical context of place bonds and the sensing of places, such as aesthetics and a feeling of dwelling.

Term ‘place’, as opposed to space, expresses a strong affective bond between a person and a particular setting. In other words, place is mixed with human values and principles. As a result, place is a particular space which is covered with meanings and values by the users.

Places play an essential and vital role in human life. Each place has its own unique character that is an important issue in social science.

SENSE OF PLACE

The absence of quality of being distinctive and meaningful place is called placelessness. Lacking of a proper place for people, things etc., lacking of a geographic orientation.

• with mass communication, and increasingly high technology, places become more and more similar, so that locations lose a distinctive ‘sense of place’.

• Essentially, placelessness is the loss of a unique sense of place and increasing uniformity.

• When space is filled with cultural meanings, places (cultural, varied, relative) emerge. But when landscapes are not used by people who live in them placelessness results.

• Appreciation of placelessness provides a framework of reference for urban design. The factors which contribute towards contemporary sense of placelessness are globalization, mass culture and loss of social and cultural relations

PLACELESSNESS

GLOBALIZATION:

It is multi-faceted process in which the world is increasingly inter connected with centralized decision making exploiting efficiencies and economies of scale and standardization.

Now a days people all around the world follow the same standards as uniformity. There is no much heterogeneity in the standards and design which should show our cultural values and tradition.

MASS CULTURE:

These are formulated by manufacturers, governments and professional designers and are guided and communicated through mass media. Uniform products and places are created for people of supposedly uniform needs tastes, or perhaps vice versa.

China town in many cities across the world is the example of mass culture. In which the people of same place builds and adopts the architectural design of different people.

CONT…

LOSS OF TERROTORY:

Due to emerging modern design concepts, people no longer care and practice their own architectural design which causes loss of territory for them.

Loss of territory means that in a certain place of territory the people don't practice their own ancient architectural design, but adopt the modern designs.

CONT…

Place differentiation means to create a new place which represents the whole city. It becomes identity of the city. Place differentiation distinguishes one place from other. Historical places conserve the identity of the city.

Physical landscape is more responsive and amendable to bring new changes as compare to economic structure of city. Important dimensions are place marketing and city branding in city development. Iconic buildings provide iconic identity to city. Similar buildings with similar design losses the distinction and identity of the city.

PLACE DIFFERENTIATION

Imagineering-manufacturing place identities-involves deliberate use of symbols/themes (often drawn from existing places) to enhance place distinctiveness. At a large scale, this is termed as place marketing.

Place marketing involves developing such images for tourism and economic development purpose.

Use of images in place marketing has a number of recognized problems, including mismatches between images and reality.

Place marketing involves attempts to:

Change the perceptual place image in the minds of target audiences through advertisement and place promotion campaigns.

To carry out physical changes to place through real estate development, external rehabilitation and establishment of new attractions, activities and events.

This may be done by the help of icons.

PLACE MARKETING

Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee

Place theming can be defined as designing and decorating restaurants, hotels, shopping malls, casinos and even small towns to exaggerate stereotypes and recreate lost places.

Depending on extent of existing source material, place theming can involve reinventing or inventing places.

Reinventing places start from a basis in reality, but involve a significant change, distortion and loss of authenticity. Whereas, inventing places spring from the creative minds of authors, artists, architects, designers and imaginers

Place theming can occurs in a variety of settings including shopping malls, historic district or tourist destinations.

PLACE THEMING

INVENTED PLACE:

Invented place is a purposeful thematisation which is now widespread, extending from shopping malls to festival markets to urban waterfronts.

Sternberg (2000: 274)

• Merit and Demerit:

No doubt that invented place, is a welcome correction to modernism’s obsession but it also caused forgetting of the past and starting over a clean slate

 On the other hand its merit is that it creates reality out of fantasy in many ways. It is successful because it adheres certain principles of sequential experience and storytelling, creating an appropriate and meaningful sense of place in which both activities and memories are individual and shared

CONT…

The Palace in the ‘New” Old Town Development, Dubai

PRINCIPLES OF URBAN ENTERTAINMENT DESTINATION:

Hannigan (1998) discusses a particular kind of invented place—the urban entertainment destination (UED) or fantasy city. Its principles are:

• Theme-o-center

• Aggressively Branded

• Open day and night

• Modular

• Postmodern

CONT…

Invented places and place theming provides opportunities for urban design and place-making, but the practices raise a number of place-making issues and there has been such critical comment:

SUPERFICIALITY:

• Destroys real place identity

• Place’s intangibility has been widely exploited

• Real places with their full freight of art and memories are devalued and destroyed

• Architectural fetishism, Harvey(1990: 77)

COMMODIFICATION OF PLACE:

• Outside inventions rather than expression of local culture

• “Economic space” invades “lived space”

• Places commercial Exploitation rather than its authentic development

CRITICISM OF PLACE THEMING AND INVENTED PLACES

SIMULACRUM AND THE REAL:

• Public’s inability distinguish between what is real and what is not

• Simulations and reality are two different things

• First order simulation are obvious copies of reality

• Second order simulations are copies that blur the boundaries between reality and representation

• Third order simulation (simulacra) are imitations of things that are never actually existed

• In first and second reality exist while in third it doesn’t

CONT…

AUTHENTICITY

• Ethical

• Natural

• Honest

• Simple

• Sustainable

• Beautiful

• Rooted

CONT…

The value of the perceptual dimension of urban design is the emphasis placed on people and how they perceive; value and both draw meaning from and add meaning to the urban environment.

Places that are real to people invite and require involvement- both intellectual and emotional-and provide a sense of psychological connectedness.

Urban designers thus need to learn how to make better people places by observing existing places and through dialogue with their users and stakeholders.

CONCLUSION

THANK YOU…..!