The Relationship between the Color Landscape Characteristics of Autumn Plant Communities and Public Aesthetics in Urban Parks in Changsha, China

Abstract

Contemporary landscape architecture studies have paid close attention to the interactions between public aesthetic preferences and the landscape environment. Scenic beauty has become an important evaluation indicator of landscape quality. The quality of the plant color landscape is an important factor affecting scenic beauty. Exploring the relationship between the composition rules and internal properties of autumn plant color landscapes in urban parks and public aesthetic preferences can provide new ideas for the evaluation and design of plant community color landscapes. Taking 12 parks in Changsha City, Hunan Province, China, as the study area and 85 plant communities as the sample plots, scenic beauty estimation (SBE) was used to evaluate the autumn plant color landscape of urban parks. ColorImpact software was used to extract the color values of each plant community. Fifteen original color element indicators were determined, and the data were statistically analyzed by principal component analysis (PCA), one-way ANOVA, multiple comparison analysis and systematic cluster analysis. Four principal components were extracted to construct the characteristic indices and a comprehensive model of the color landscape quality of autumn plant communities. The four characteristic indices showed significant or extremely significant differences among the five SBE grades. From the overall trend, the SBE grades showed a positive correlation with PC1 (primary and adjunctive color index), PC2 (color structure and property index) and PC3 (autumn-color-leafed index) and a negative correlation with PC4 (intersperse color index). RPH (ratio of primary hue), RP (ratio of primary color), RC (color-leafed index), RWC (ratio of warm and cool colors), and NC (number of colors) were the key factors affecting the SBE grade. Overall, RPH, RP, RC, and RWC positively influenced the SBE values, while NC negatively influenced the SBE values, and five to seven colors were more moderate. The quality of the color landscape can be improved by creating plant communities with three types of color composition: warm-toned dominant type, warm- and cold-toned contrast type, and multicolor harmonic type. The results provide a reference for the evaluation, design and construction of autumn plant color landscapes in urban parks.

Expanding the Associations between Landscape Characteristics and Aesthetic Sensory Perception for Traditional Village Public Space

“…Luo et al showed that the number of experimental colors is between 5 and 7. Among them the color leaf index was high, and the large area of uniform fall warm colors were easily preferred by the public [64]. This can be used to explain why the complementary hue ratio (CHi) hurt landscape aesthetic sensory perception in this study.…”

“…Previous related studies have shown that large areas of warmcolored plants in autumn can create a warm and peaceful feeling, and the combination of adjacent red and yellow colors makes it more likely to form a harmonious color combination [63]. With a softer and more fluid excess between colors, it helps the public to process visual information more easily, and at the same time creates an emotional experience of calmness, gentleness, and serenity, which is thus preferred by the public [64]. These results explained the positive effect of the proportion of neighboring hues (NHi) on landscape preference in this study, where panoramas were also collected in autumn, and the color of the foliage trees were dominated by reddish-yellow tones.…”

Shaping Possibilities of Traditions and Innovation in China Contemporary Landscape Design: A Case Study of Changsha Hunan Province

“…Figure 1 shows that the historic buildings were planned to comprise the main architecture, while the historic homes were supposed to compose the minor architecture as a supplement to the cultural relic sites for the overall system, with fewer standards for protection. Additionally, plant communities of three distinct color compositions such as warmtoned dominating, warm-and cold-toned contrast, and multicolor harmonic can enhance the visual appeal of a given area by varying the hues and tones present in the surrounding natural environment (Luo et al, 2023). People's mental and emotional responses to colors vary.…”

“…People's mental and emotional responses to colors vary. More and more thought is being put into the aesthetics of color landscapes as part of the building of ecological civilization (Luo et al, 2023).…”

The Role of “Nostalgia” in Environmental Restorative Effects from the Perspective of Healthy Aging: Taking Changchun Parks as an Example

“…The evaluation of landscape perception drew on the division of landscape elements and sensory dimensions [56], incorporating olfactory perception [57]. It included 8 factors: L1 visual beautification of landscape topography, L2 guidance of landscape roads [58], L3 affective response to landscape sculptures [59], L4 color configuration of plant landscape [60], L5 distribution of landscape facilities, L6 cultural characteristics of symbolic landscape [61], L7 affective enhancement of soundscape (good artificial and natural sounds such as music playback, birds singing, and flowing water, without obvious noise interference) [62], and L8 atmospheric rendering of olfactory landscape (good natural scent, such as floral aroma, with no obvious adverse odor interference) [63]. In this study, "nostalgia" was divided into two dimensions: nostalgia inclination and nostalgia affection.…”