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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.

Due to the tremendous increase in automobile transportation and heavy pedestrian movements in developing countries, roads are becoming deadlier year by year. It is acknowledged that context specific research on pedestrian-vehicular conflict are urgently needed considering the built environment characteristics. Therefore, this paper aims to (1) redefine pedestrian-vehicular conflict that would enable to explain micro- and macro-built environment-related variables in a particular context, and (2) develop a methodology that could be used in a place where comprehensive data are limitedly available for a spatial analysis. This research redefines pedestrian-vehicular conflict as “the pedestrian contact with potentially harmful vehicular traffic”, rather than accidents. Based on this definition devise a methodology. The primary data collection method adopted to collect causal factors related to spatial data was, photographs. The spatial data were analysed by using QGIS platform. The pedestrian volume models are constructed by a space syntax framework and correlated with a composite choropleth map to get the potential conflicting points. A perception survey was carried out to confirm the spatial analysis. The research findings indicate that the methodology developed can be used to identify built environment factors related risk areas spatially. Consequently, it is possible to fill the research gap by introducing a low-cost, widely applicable, impartial, spatial and perception-based methodology that assesses the built environmental characteristics in relation to pedestrian-vehicular conflict. This research would support the urban planners and designers, allowing them to comprehend the risk related nature of pedestrian-vehicular conflict in their urban planning schemes before intervening with plans and designs

The main objective of this research is to examine the determinants of place attachment of horizontal and vertical residential environments (specifically at neighbourhood level). Place attachment determinants and its scale were formulated by reviewing literature: 16 variables (social and physical determinants) were identified. Structured questionnaire survey was conducted to collect data from 200 residents of each residential environment in fast growing Colombo Metropolitan Region in Sri Lanka. The gathered data were subjected to statistical analysis in Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS). According to the results, the level of place attachment of horizontal residential neighbourhood is higher than the vertical residential neighbourhood, while respondents of both neighbourhoods indicated more than average level of attachment. Regression analysis shows that, in both neighbourhoods, both physical determinants and social determinants appear as significant determinants to explain the changes in place attachment. Moreover, residents feel more attached to the place due to physical determinants, whereas, the residents of the horizontal residential area feel more attached to the place due to the social determinants. The comparison of two types of neighbourhoods might provide additional insights into place attachment. The result of this study can be useful for planners, architects and policy makers when planning the different types of residential environments.