Assessing the visual quality of green landscaping in rural residential areas: the case of Changzhou, China

Abstract

Changzhou is a typical waterside municipality with approximately 2,500 years of history located south of the Yangtze River. It was an agriculturally oriented region but is becoming an industrialized region. Rural green landscaping in this region possesses characteristics of traditional Chinese gardens. This paper presents a methodology for assessing the visual quality of green landscaping in rural residential areas through public perception-based and expert/design approaches. The former approach enables us to rank green landscaping based on a survey of public preference; the latter weighs the contributions of the attributes contained in a photograph to its overall scenic beauty via correlation, regression, and factor analyses. The photographs used in the survey included road greenways, riparian greenways, residential public gardens and green landscaping around houses, with each type of landscape represented by seven photographs. In total, 141 college students and 41 other participants ranked photographs of each landscaping type from highest to lowest preference. The results indicate that the preferences of students are similar to those of the general public. Examples of green landscaping depicted in the "best" four photographs possessed more attractive qualities regarding the variety of vegetation, richness of colors and a selection of human additions compared to those depicted in the "worst" photographs. The perceived visual quality was positively influenced by, in decreasing order of importance, the variety of vegetation, color contrast, the openness of green spaces, the area of vegetation, and positive man-made elements; conversely, it was negatively influenced by the type of topography. Moreover, some suggestions were offered for future rural greening regarding perceived visual beauty.

Assessing street-level urban greenery using Google Street View and a modified green view index

“…However, the rating method to real locations is time consuming and expensive, and results are always subjective to different raters (Gupta et al, 2012). In addition, the rating method is also hard to carry out due to the difficulty in recruiting and transporting participants to real locations (Yao et al, 2012).…”

“…Using color photographs or slides as surrogates for the natural environment has been chosen as a cost-effective method for evaluating urban greenery (Yao et al, 2012;Meitner, 2004). This method had been validated by various independent studies (Daniel and Boster, 1976;Shuttleworth, 1980;Stamps, 1990).…”

Effects of Design Proportion and Distribution of Color in Urban and Suburban Green Space Planning to Visual Aesthetics Quality

“…Kaufman and Lohr found that all trees with green and red color appearances evoked positive responses [23], but the preference also depends on the environment [29] and other indicators. A landscape rich with colors can give people a better visual experience than a single color [30][31][32]. Seasonal change in color is important [21,32] and the overall landscape color change in spring and summer getting higher scores from evaluators [26].The proportion and distribution of color affects people perceptions and preference for landscapes and people have preferred a natural color pattern [23].…”

Index of Landscape Disharmony (ILDH) as a new tool combining the aesthetic and ecological approach to landscape assessment

“…Scenes which feature a lack of buildings and technical infrastructure, as well as a lack of fields, would probably be judged as fully harmonious from an aesthetic point of view. They are distinguished by their vividness, high contribution of greenery, and lack of artificial elements recognised as positively correlated to perceived landscape harmony (Arriaza et al, 2004;Clay and Smidt, 2004;Bulut and Yilmaz, 2008;Yao et al, 2014). Their harmony, however, may be diminished by ecological factors such as development in contrast to land relief forms or soil type (Fig.…”