This study investigates the relationship between color perceptual attributes and color emotions, as well as the influence of different cultural backgrounds. Totally 214 color samples were evaluated on 12 emotion variables by subjects from seven different region groups in the psychophysical experiment. By factor analysis, it was found that three factors were sufficient to represent 80 11 "region-emotion" variables. For each variable, there is no distinct difference among different region groups. The 12 emotion variables could be divided into four categories, namely, activity index, potency index, definition index, and temperature index. Factor scores were further calculated to study the determinants on each factor. The analysis showed that the three factors were mainly related to chroma, lightness, and hue, respectively. It was concluded that chroma and lightness were the most important factors on color emotion, whereas the influences of hue and cultural background were very limited. (c) 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

Psychophysical experiments were conducted in the UK, Taiwan, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Argentina, and Iran to assess colour emotion for two-colour combinations using semantic scales warm/cool, heavy/ light, active/passive, and like/dislike. A total of 223 observers participated, each presented with 190 colour pairs as the stimuli, shown individually on a cathode ray tube display. The results show consistent responses across cultures only for warm/cool, heavy/light, and active/passive. The like/dislike scale, however, showed some differences between the observer groups, in particular between the Argentinian responses and those obtained from the other observers. Factor analysis reveals that the Argentinian observers preferred passive colour pairs to active ones more than the other observers. In addition to the cultural difference in like/dislike, the experimental results show some effects of gender, professional background (design vs. nondesign), and age. Female observers were found to prefer colour pairs with high-lightness or lowchroma values more than their male counterparts. Observers with a design background liked low-chroma This article was published online on 12 November 2010. An error was subsequently identified in Table II. This notice is included in the online and print version to indicate that both have been corrected. *Correspondence to: Li-Chen Ou (e-mail: l.ou@leeds.ac.uk).Volume 37, Number 1, February 2012 23 colour pairs or those containing colours of similar hue more than nondesign observers. Older observers liked colour pairs with high-lightness or high-chroma values more than young observers did. Based on the findings, a two-level theory of colour emotion is proposed, in which warm/cool, heavy/light, and active/passive are identified as the reactive-level responses and like/dislike the reflective-level response.

Today, urban planning processes involve many stakeholders and efficient dialogue tools are needed to support communication in transdisciplinary environments. The aim of our study is to identify visualization challenges in urban planning. Based on a state of the art study and a thematic analysis of 114 articles, published in 2004–2014 and found through snowball sampling, the development and implementation of digital visualization tools for dialogue are discussed. A wide range of examples of visualization tools for dialogue has been found; either based on 2D maps, 3D environments or gaming. The initiators of the development originate from different disciplines, such as geographic information (GI) science, computer graphics, 3D modelling, Virtual Reality, interaction design and urban planning. There has been an increasing amount of usability studies during recent years. There is a tendency for the usability studies to have gone from experimental and prototype studies to more and more concern real planning processes and implementation. Studies of implemented tools in real planning processes are, however, still rare. Gaming appears more and more frequently. Challenges are related to integration of qualitative and quantitative data, representation of data as regard appropriate levels of realism and detailing, as well as the user’s experience and the appearance of the digital models. There is a need to consider how we can achieve the full potential of visualization tools, including optimal effectiveness of visualization tools and processes for dialogue as well as how they can be implemented. Organizational preparedness is necessary, including clear ownership, allocation of resources for maintenance, competence and access to tools and technology.

In the past 20 years, considerable progress has been made to improve urban air quality in the EU. However, road traffic still contributes considerably to the deterioration of urban air quality to below standards, which requires a method to measure properly and model pollution levels resulting from road traffic. In order to visualize the geographical distribution of pollution concentration realistically, we applied the Land Use Regression (LUR) model to the urban area of Gothenburg. The NO 2 concentration was already obtained by 25 samplers through the urban area during 7-20 May, 2001. Predictive variables such as altitude, density, roads types, traffic and land use were estimated by geographic information system in buffers ranging 50 to 500 m-radii. Linear regression (α=5%) between NO 2 and every predictive variable was calculated, and the most robust variables and without collinearity variables were selected to the multivariate regression model. The final formula was applied using Kriging in a grid map to estimate NO 2 levels. The average of measurements was 23.5 μg/m³ (± 6.8 μg/m³) and 180 predictive variables were obtained. The final model explained 59.4% of the variance of NO 2 concentration with presence of altitude and sum of traffic within 150 m around the sampler sites as predictor variables. The correlation measured versus predicted levels of NO 2 was r = 0.77 (p < 0.001). These results highlight the contribution of traffic in air pollution concentration, although the model is not precise in regions outside the urban area (e.g. islands and rural area). Moreover, future analyses should include meteorological data to improve the LUR modelling.

Colour research from different scientific traditions start from different basic questions and use different methods and concepts. This makes it difficult to communicate and to judge result relevance in a wider perspective. Here we start from architects' need of colour knowledge and discuss recent studies of colour appearance and colour emotion, with and without explicit connection to architecture. We stress the need for further development and clarification of concepts and conclude that the multitude of studies with different approaches can be seen as cases, jointly adding to a widened and deepened understanding of colour. The two authors of this article both have arrived at our colour interest through professional work within the field of architecture. Working with interior and exterior design tasks, we found that colour is a very important means of architectural articulation. We also found that there was a severe lack of knowledge about colour in the spatially complex situations of real life architecture. How are different colours experienced in rooms, or on façades? And how do the colours affect our experience of the room, or the building, as a totality? With this in mind we joined the International Colour Association (AIC) and started to attend colour conferences, hoping to find people with the same interests and sharing the same questions. What we found was both disturbing and encouraging: In some conference sessions people gave interesting lectures on colour in art, architecture and the continuing culture of mankind. They spoke a language that we could understand, referred to topics that we knew of and showed beautiful pictures as fitting illustrations of the colour issues discussed. We could get both inspiration and knowledge from these lectures, but most often they did not deal with the problems that we had found, did not ask the same questions as we did.In other conference sessions the problem was the opposite one: We could realize that the problems and questions were close to our own, but we could neither understand the technical language of the speakers nor the diagrams and figures showing their results.This leads us to the theme of this article: Questions, methods and terminology of different ''colour disciplines'' differ, often to such an extent that we find it difficult to communicate, although we might sense that we have something to learn from each other. Still researchers from different disciplines and with different scientific approaches have all to gain from a deepened collaboration. We have to discuss issues like: What research questions are fruitful for different purposes; what are the limitations and prospects of different methodological approaches; to what extent can results be relevant under other conditions than those of the study? In this article we give examples of recent research with different approaches and with potential relevance for architec-