Related Papers
Urban Blue Spaces
Capturing affordances for health and well-being at the city scale
2021 •
Gloria Niin
Following lines, an analysis of reflexivity, how does the human shape the urban site and how does the site shape the individual?
Sam Metz
This paper is less interested in how the agent negotiates from one area to another, instead various parameters that influence cognition of way finding techniques are thought about and in particular the overarching principle of the reputation of linearity. The role of lines in the city is a complex one. This paper discusses how the pedestrian is impacted by lines when way finding and importantly how we begin to think about the space we are about to negotiate prior to embarking on the journey. The focus of study for this work takes as its basis a separation of the way finder as inhabitant rather than occupant as laid out by the anthropologist Tim Ingold, who states that inhabitant knowledge is alongly integrated (2007:89), i.e., follows the terrestrial undulations of the environment and gains insight from following paths across and along the urban environment. Agents follow lines (e.g., paths and roads) in order to navigate the city, but lines are also formed by the edges of buildings and physical structures in the city. The architectural theorist Rudolf Arnheim has written about reaction to built form and provides useful insight into the impact of linearity on thought. The more cultural dimension of linearity is also at play when an individual imagines and mentally reconstructs routes through the urban space. The scope of linearity for providing schematics is developed here from the work of anthropologist Tim Ingold, who develops a social history of lines. The agent’s schematic is a mixture of understanding of personal ideas of how the city is organised and socially informed information. The environment is in all cases mediated by the body, and this paper aims to look at how the body may or may not be an adequate receptacle for the encoded messages of linearity within the city. The possible interruption of the agent’s intentionality by the limitations of linearity in the city will be discussed in terms of embodiment. The paper is organised as follows; the paper begins by talking about notions of presence in order to assess how we assert presence in the built environment. A discussion of embodied interaction with built form is followed by analysis of the cultural connections with linearity as an organising principle. Both of these aspects relate the manner of our city experience informed by linearity, which concludes this paper.
Sensory Navigation in the City Centre. Perceptual paths, sense walks and interactive atmospheres
2016 •
Carolina Vasilikou
While walking in the city, the senses play an essential role in navigation and human behaviour, providing rational grounds for knowledge and action. Traditionally, different scientific disciplines have understood the senses as separate channels for collection of information from the environment. Recently, it has become clear that the senses together form an integrated knowledge‐gathering system. This paper investigates the nature of this integration during the spatial experience of wayfinding and navigation in the city. The paper presents the first findings of a community engagement project exploring the sensory and spatial experience of the heritage city centre of Canterbury (UK). This approach brings to the foreground the significance of combining objective data with subjective evaluations of spatial quality and use of urban spaces. The project outcome proposes an interactive representation of sensory‐intensive experiences, mapping and notation.
Urban Studies
The Sensory Experiencing of Urban Design: The Role of Walking and Perceptual Memory
2012 •
Monica Degen, Gillian Rose
"Experience is conceptualised in both academic and policy circles as a more-or-less direct effect of the design of the built environment. Drawing on findings from a research project that investigated people’s everyday experiences of designed urban environments in two UK towns, this paper suggests at least two reasons why sensory encounters between individuals and built environments cannot in fact be understood entirely as a consequence of the design features of those environments. Drawing from empirical analysis based on surveys, ethnographic ‘walk-alongs’ and photo-elicitation interviews, we argue that distinct senses of place do depend on the sensory experiencing of built environments. However, that experiencing is significantly mediated in two ways. First, it is mediated by bodily mobility: in particular, the walking practices specific to a particular built environment. Secondly, sensory experiences are intimately intertwined with perceptual memories that mediate the present moment of experience in various ways: by multiplying, judging and dulling the sensory encounter. In conclusion, it is argued that work on sensory urban experiencing needs to address more fully the diversity and paradoxes produced by different forms of mobility through, and perceptual memories of, built environments. "
Experiencing the Urban Space - A Cognitive Mapping Approach
Ricardo Garcia-Mira
The dependence on cars for urban mobility and the exponential increase in traffic and urban infrastructure to sustain traffic have lead to an encapsulated way of life, where the connection with the natural environment is much more reduced and programmed. In a previous study, a process based on estimating distances showed that children who move around their city by automobile do not appreciate their environment as a spatial continuum, but rather as a series of independent spaces that are reached by automobile or bus, thereby evidencing a different way of conceptualizing urban space in the light of different cognitive structures (Goluboff, Garca-Mira, and Garca-Fontn, 2002). The present study is concerned with the process of understanding and knowledge of urban space, and contrasting the cognitive structure of different groups. The implications that this study may have for urban planning are discussed.
Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction
Affordances Based on Traces of Use in Urban Environments
2020 •
Florian Bemmann
UC Berkeley Dissertations Title The Personal City: The Experiential, Cognitive Nature of Travel and Activity and Implications for Accessibility The Personal City: The Experiential, Cognitive Nature of Travel and Activity and Implications for Accessibility The Personal City: The Experiential, Cogn...
2013 •
Andrew Mondschein
Transportation planning research addresses accessibility from diverse approaches, focusing varyingly on the usability of the transportation system as a whole, a particular mode, the pattern of land uses, or the wherewithal of individuals and communities to make use of those systems. One aspect of accessibility that has received relatively little attention from planners is its cognitive, experiential aspect. Individuals' activity and travel choices require not just money and time but also information about opportunities in the city. This component of an individual's accessibility is highly personal but also dependent on the terrain of land uses and transportation options shaped by planners and policymakers. I seek to extend current accessibility research, addressing shortcomings in how the literature deals with individual experience of the city and knowledge. Through a series of empirical analyses of activity patterns and cognitive maps of the iii Los Angeles region, I explor...
THE COGNITIVE …
Use of Affordances in Cognitive Modeling for Wayfinding
2006 •
Geoffrey Edwards
Abstract. The CADMUS system produces maps of perceived difficulties of displacements in complex buildings, for people without disability or for those suffering a physical or perceptive disability. Using a numerical model of the environment as a foundation and a descriptive ...
Periodica Polytechnica Architecture
Perceiving Liveability through the Diverse Aspects ofWalkability
2021 •
Amir Sirjani
A city's walkability is a measure of how friendly, safe and attractive a city is for walking within it. Moreover, a well-designed walkable environment can become a place where many social, political, and other important urban activities occur. Following the appearance of motorised vehicles, cars have occupied urban spaces, with many city structures changing according to motor vehicles' requirements rather than pedestrians. Regardless of the many benefits that cars bring to people’s lives, the overuse of cars has had many social, physical, and economic consequences. Based on the reviewed literature, this research analyses the relationship between the built environment and walking, behavioural factors and travel mode choices, walking as a means of socialisation and as a transportation mode. In addition to these factors, four main groups of criteria contributing to increased walking rate are identified: lifestyle, urban design factors, personal and locational factors. Each of t...
The City: An Interface for all
2008 •
Francisco Utray, Jose Luis Pajares
1. ABSTRACT The accessibility of urban space is usually considered in terms of ergonomics and mobility. However, while physical accessibility enables spatial mobility, it does not ensure universal access to the city as a complex foundation for human social and cultural activities.
