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02 The Perceptual Dimension

The document discusses the perceptual dimension of urban environments. It describes how people perceive and experience place through their senses and how environmental perception involves gathering and making sense of sensory information. Perception has cognitive, affective, interpretative, and evaluative dimensions. The document also discusses how people construct meaning and a sense of place from the urban environments and symbols within them. Placelessness can occur when local culture and attachment to property are lost.

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213 views17 pages

02 The Perceptual Dimension

The document discusses the perceptual dimension of urban environments. It describes how people perceive and experience place through their senses and how environmental perception involves gathering and making sense of sensory information. Perception has cognitive, affective, interpretative, and evaluative dimensions. The document also discusses how people construct meaning and a sense of place from the urban environments and symbols within them. Placelessness can occur when local culture and attachment to property are lost.

Uploaded by

anon_994103125
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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8/4/2017

The Perceptual
Dimension
Based on material by Carmona, Heath, Oc, and Tiesdell (2003 and 2010)

The perceptual dimension


 Awareness and appreciation of environmental
perception
 Perception and experience of ‘place’
 ‘Sense of Place’ and ‘lived-in experiences’
 Two parts
 Environmental perception
 Construction of place

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Environmental Perception
 Perceive – be stimulated by sight, sound, smell or
touch that offer clues about the world around us
 Gathering, organizing and making sense of
information about the environment
A more complex processing and understanding of
stimuli
 Sensation vs. Perception
 Blurry/overlap

Environmental Perception
 Valuable senses in interpreting the environment:
 Vision – the dominant sense; orientation in space; complex
 Hearing – all-surrounding, no boundaries; emotionally rich
 Smell – information poor but emotionally richer than hearing
 Touch – more from feet (walking) and buttocks (sitting) than hands
 These sensory stimuli are perceived and appreciated as an
interconnected whole (cumulative effect)
 Vision is dominant, but urban environment is not only perceived
visually
 Non-visual dimensions are underdeveloped and underexploited

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Environmental Perception
 An environment’s ‘soundscape’ can be orchestrated
 Focus on positive sounds: birdsong, children’s voices, crunching of
leaves, waterfalls, fountains
 Positive sounds can make negative sounds like traffic
 Four dimensions of perception that work simultaneously
 Cognitive – make sense of the environment
 Affective – involves feelings
 Interpretative – encompasses meaning or associations from
environment
 Evaluative – values and preferences; determined ‘good’ or ‘bad’

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Kevin Lynch’s 5 elements


(The Image of the City)
 Paths – channels of movement
 Edges – boundaries, transition
 Districts – visually homogenous in texture
and/or land use
 Nodes – places of intense activity
 Landmarks – visually distinctive points of
reference; often together with nodes

The Image of the City


 None of Lynch’s elements exists in isolation; all
combine to provide the overall image

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Meaning and Symbolism


 All urban environments contain symbols, meanings, and
values
 Semiology – the study of ‘signs’ and their meaning
 Different types of sign
 Iconic sign – a portrait represents the person
 Indexical sign – smoke indicates fire (material
relationship)
 Symbolic sign – classical columns represent grandeur
(constructed through social and cultural systems)

Meaning and Symbolism


 Layering of meaning
 First layer – denotation (a porch as shelter)
 Second layer – connotation (a porch with a symbolic function)
 The second layer can be more important than the first layer
(e.g. throne)
 Meanings in the environment are produced and interpreted
 There may be a difference between the intended message
and the received message: the ‘gap’
 The gap is related to the ‘death of the author’
 The environment may mean differently to different people

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Meaning and Symbolism


 Three ways of expressing a building’s meaning:
 The ‘Las Vegas’ way – a big sign in front a little building
 The ‘Decorated Shed’ – efficient building, façade covered
with signs (most pre-20th century buildings)
 The ‘duck’ – building form expresses its function (most
buildings in 20th century and beyond)

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Construction of Place
 Sense of Place
 The ‘genius loci’
 People experience something beyond the physical and sensory
properties of a place
 People are attached to the spirit of the place
 Often persists despite changes in a city
 It is easy to think of a successful place and experience it, but…
 It is difficult to determine why it is successful
 It is uncertain if that success can be replicated elsewhere
 People transform a ‘space’ into a ‘place’

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Sense of Place
 Successful places typically have an ‘urban buzz’
 Jane Jacobs (1961) calls it an “intricate ballet in which
individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive
parts which miraculously reinforce one another and
compose an orderly whole.”
 Successful public spaces are characterized by the
presence of people, in an often self-reinforcing process
 Itmust be a ‘transaction base’ (Montgomery, 1998), with
economic, social, and cultural transactions
 People have to use the space

Indicators of Vitality
 According to Montgomery (1998):
 Variety of land uses, enabling self-improvement
 Local businesses and shops
 Night-time activity (e.g. varying opening hours)
 Street markets
 Various meeting places (cinemas, wine bars, pubs,
restaurants, diners) of varying kinds, prices, and quality
 Space for ‘people-watching’
 Variety of building types, styles, and designs
 Active street life and street frontage

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Placelessness
 “There’s no there there.”
 Placelessness signifies absence or loss of meaning
 The three processes that contributed to placelessness:
 Globalization (but can also be used to make places)
 Mass culture (destroys local culture)
 Loss of attachment to property (people don’t feel they belong)
 ‘Invented’ places – a result of standardization
 Superficiality
 Other-directedness
 Lacking authenticity

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