Imageability and legibility: cognitive analysis and visibility assessment in Galle heritage city
Abstract
The concepts of imageability and legibility are important aspects of urban design. Many scholars use the terms “imageability” and “legibility” interchangeably, usually examining one concept and applying the implications to the other. This research explores the relationship between these two concepts by answering the research questions: 1. how do people perceive the saliency of landmarks (imageability) and 2. how does the spatial configuration facilitate the visibility level of landmarks (legibility)? The Galle Heritage City in Sri Lanka is considered as the case study. The first part of the empirical study is to assess the level of imageability of urban space users by completing 100 cognitive maps and producing a composite cognitive map that indicates the structural landmarks’ salience or the level of imageability. The second part is the level of legibility of the landmarks by employing the visibility assessment process and the third part compares the two results with a concurrence matrix. The findings highlight that there is a positive relationship between people’s perception (imageability) and level of visibility (legibility). Further, imageability mostly depends on semantic properties than legibility, but legibility predominantly depends on structural properties and visual properties are almost equally important to both concepts.
Keyword : cognitive studies, heritage city, imageability, landmarks, legibility, visibility assessment
How to Cite
Abeynayake, T., Meetiyagoda, L., Kankanamge, N., & Mahanama, P. K. S. (2022). Imageability and legibility: cognitive analysis and visibility assessment in Galle heritage city. Journal of Architecture and Urbanism, 46(2), 126–136. https://doi.org/10.3846/jau.2022.16177
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
References
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Meetiyagoda, L., & Munasinghe, J. (2016). Towards great streets: An empirical approach to study a streetscape. Bhumi, the Planning Research Journal, 1(2), 34–49.
Monk, J. (2019). Mapping the soft city: Using cognitive mapping to respond to London-based literature and explore the construction of teenage place-related identity. Children’s Geographies, 17(2), 162–176. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2018.1471448
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Omer, I., & Goldblatt, R. (2007). The implications of inter-visibility between landmarks on wayfinding performance: An investigation using a virtual urban environment. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 31(5), 520–534. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2007.08.004
Presson, C. C., & Montello, D. R. (1988). Points of reference in spatial cognition: Stalking the elusive landmark. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 6(4), 378–381. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-835X.1988.tb01113.x
Quesnot, T., & Roche, S. (2015). Quantifying the significance of semantic landmarks in familiar and unfamiliar environments. In International Conference on Spatial Information Theory (pp. 468–489). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23374-1_22
Raubal, M., & Winter, S. (2002). Enriching wayfinding instructions with local landmarks. In International Conference on Geographic Information Science (pp. 243–259). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45799-2_17
Richter, K.-F., & Winter, S. (2014). Introduction: What landmarks are, and why they are important. In Landmarks (pp. 1–25). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05732-3_1
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Taylor, N. (2009). Legibility and aesthetics in urban design. Journal of Urban Design, 14(2), 189–202. https://doi.org/10.1080/13574800802670929
Tuan, Y.-F. (1979). Space and place: Humanistic perspective. In Philosophy in geography (pp. 387–427). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9394-5_19
Williams, J. M. G., Ellis, N. C., Tyers, C., Healy, H., Rose, G., & Macleod, A. K. (1996). The specificity of autobiographical memory and imageability of the future. Memory & Cognition, 24(1), 116–125. https://doi.org/10.3758/bf03197278
Winter, S., Tomko, M., Elias, B., & Sester, M. (2008). Landmark hierarchies in context. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 35(3), 381–398. https://doi.org/10.1068/b33106
Abeyweera, M., & Kaluthanthri, P. (2018). Attributes of city brand of Galle City, Sri Lanka. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Real Estate Management and Valuation (ICREMV) (pp. 100–111), Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Al-Shams, A. R., & Badarulzaman, N. (2014). Evaluating the city image: A focus on landmarks of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Asian Social Science, 10(4), 241. https://doi.org/10.5539/ass.v10n4p241
Bentley, I. (1985). Responsive environments: A manual for designers. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.1016/0169-2046(88)90064-3
Berleant, A. (2012). Distant cities: Thoughts on aesthetics of urbanism. In Aesthetics beyond the Arts (pp. 105–115). Ashgate.
Bernardini, W., & Peeples, M. A. (2015). Sight communities: The social significance of shared visual landmarks. American Antiquity, 80(2), 215–235. https://doi.org/10.7183/0002-7316.80.2.215
Cheshmehzangi, A. (2014). Spatial syntagma and identity of a place: Sensing, relating to, and knowing a place. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 24(7), 799–810. https://doi.org/10.1080/10911359.2013.876377
Claramunt, C., & Winter, S. (2007). Structural salience of elements of the city. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 34(6), 1030–1050. https://doi.org/10.1068/b32099
Damayanti, R., & Kossak, F. (2016). Extending Kevin Lynch’s concept of imageability in third space reading; case study of Kampungs, Surabaya–Indonesia. A/Z ITU Journal of Faculty of Architecture, 13(1), 57–67. https://doi.org/10.5505/itujfa.2016.36349
Davies, C., & Peebles, D. (2010). Spaces or scenes: Map-based orientation in urban environments. Spatial Cognition & Computation, 10(2–3), 135–156. https://doi.org/10.1080/13875861003759289
Dong, Y., Liu, H., & Zheng, T. (2020). Does the connectivity of urban public green space promote its use? An empirical study of Wuhan. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(1), 297. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17010297
Duckham, M., Winter, S., & Robinson, M. (2010). Including landmarks in routing instructions. Journal of Location Based Services, 4(1), 28–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/17489721003785602
Filomena, G., & Verstegen, J. A. (2021). Modelling the effect of landmarks on pedestrian dynamics in urban environments. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 86, 101573. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2020.101573
Fisher-Gewirtzman, D. (2018). Integrating ‘weighted views’ to quantitative 3D visibility analysis as a predictive tool for perception of space. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 45(2), 345–366. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265813516676486
Halbwachs, M. (1980). The collective memory (F. J. Ditter, Jr. & V. Y. Ditter, Trans.). Harper & Row. (Original work published 1950)
Hamburger, K. (2020). Visual landmarks are exaggerated: A theoretical and empirical view on the meaning of landmarks in human wayfinding. KI-Künstliche Intelligenz, 34(4), 557–562. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13218-020-00668-5
Henderson, J. M., & Hayes, T. R. (2017). Meaning-based guidance of attention in scenes as revealed by meaning maps. Nature Human Behaviour, 1(10), 743–747. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0208-0
Henderson, J. M., Malcolm, G. L., & Schandl, C. (2009). Searching in the dark: Cognitive relevance drives attention in real-world scenes. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 16(5), 850–856. https://doi.org/10.3758/pbr.16.5.850
Hussain, K. A. M., & Ujang, N. (2014). Visitors’ identification of landmarks in the historic district of Banda Hilir, Melaka, Malaysia. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 153, 689–699. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.10.100
Jacobs, M. (2011). Psychology of the visual landscape. Research in Urbanism Series, 2(1), 41–54. https://doi.org/10.7480/rius.2.206
Jiang, B. (2013). The image of the city out of the underlying scaling of city artifacts or locations. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 103(6), 1552–1566. https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2013.779503
Kalın, A., & Yılmaz, D. (2012). A study on visibility analysis of urban landmarks: The case of Hagia Sophia (Ayasofya) in Trabzon. https://doi.org/10.4305/METU.JFA.2012.1.14
Klippel, A., & Winter, S. (2005). Structural salience of landmarks for route directions. In International Conference on Spatial Information Theory (pp. 347–362). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/11556114_22
Koseoglu, E., & Onder, D. E. (2011). Subjective and objective dimensions of spatial legibility. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 30, 1191–1195. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.10.231
Lynch, K. (1964). The image of the city. MIT Press. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/image-city
Meetiyagoda, L., & Munasinghe, J. (2016). Towards great streets: An empirical approach to study a streetscape. Bhumi, the Planning Research Journal, 1(2), 34–49.
Monk, J. (2019). Mapping the soft city: Using cognitive mapping to respond to London-based literature and explore the construction of teenage place-related identity. Children’s Geographies, 17(2), 162–176. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2018.1471448
Morello, E., & Ratti, C. (2009). A digital image of the city: 3D isovists in Lynch’s urban analysis. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 36(5), 837–853. https://doi.org/10.1068/b34144t
Nora, P. (1989). Memory and history: Les lieux de mémoir. Representations, 26, 7–24. https://doi.org/10.2307/2928520
Nurgandarum, D., & Anjani, C. (2020). Legibility of building facades and imageability of historical city center, case study: Bukittinggi city center. IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 452(1), 012158. https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/452/1/012158
Oktay, D., & Bala, H. A. (2015). A holistic research approach to measuring urban identity: Findings from Kyrenia area study. International Journal of Architectural Research: ArchNet-IJAR, 9(2), 201. https://doi.org/10.26687/archnet-ijar.v9i2.687
Omer, I., & Goldblatt, R. (2007). The implications of inter-visibility between landmarks on wayfinding performance: An investigation using a virtual urban environment. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 31(5), 520–534. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2007.08.004
Presson, C. C., & Montello, D. R. (1988). Points of reference in spatial cognition: Stalking the elusive landmark. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 6(4), 378–381. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-835X.1988.tb01113.x
Quesnot, T., & Roche, S. (2015). Quantifying the significance of semantic landmarks in familiar and unfamiliar environments. In International Conference on Spatial Information Theory (pp. 468–489). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23374-1_22
Raubal, M., & Winter, S. (2002). Enriching wayfinding instructions with local landmarks. In International Conference on Geographic Information Science (pp. 243–259). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45799-2_17
Richter, K.-F., & Winter, S. (2014). Introduction: What landmarks are, and why they are important. In Landmarks (pp. 1–25). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05732-3_1
Silavi, T., Hakimpour, F., Claramunt, C., & Nourian, F. (2017). The legibility and permeability of cities: Examining the role of spatial data and metrics. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 6(4), 101. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi6040101
Sorrows, M. E., & Hirtle, S. C. (1999). The nature of landmarks for real and electronic spaces. In International Conference on Spatial Information Theory (pp. 37–50). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48384-5_3
Surowiecki, J. (2005). The wisdom of crowds. Anchor.
Szczepańska, M., Wilkaniec, A., Łabędzka, D., & Micińska, J. (2013). Non-visual perception of landscape–use of hearing and other senses in the perception of selected spaces in the city of Poznań. Teka Komisji Architektury, Urbanistyki i Studiów Krajobrazowych, 9(2), 68–79. https://doi.org/10.35784/teka.2535
Taylor, N. (2009). Legibility and aesthetics in urban design. Journal of Urban Design, 14(2), 189–202. https://doi.org/10.1080/13574800802670929
Tuan, Y.-F. (1979). Space and place: Humanistic perspective. In Philosophy in geography (pp. 387–427). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9394-5_19
Williams, J. M. G., Ellis, N. C., Tyers, C., Healy, H., Rose, G., & Macleod, A. K. (1996). The specificity of autobiographical memory and imageability of the future. Memory & Cognition, 24(1), 116–125. https://doi.org/10.3758/bf03197278
Winter, S., Tomko, M., Elias, B., & Sester, M. (2008). Landmark hierarchies in context. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 35(3), 381–398. https://doi.org/10.1068/b33106