The impact of landscape characteristics of urban pockets on visitors and residents a study with reference to Kandy city

Abstract

The urban pockets can be identified as an important component within the city. There are two main categories of users of urban pockets; the residents and the visitors. The objective of this study is to investigate the impact of landscape characteristics of urban pockets on these two main user groups. According to the salient perceptual dimension, the individual preference of landscape is affected by three characteristics; landscape, personal and contextual. The study focuses only on the landscape characteristics, which can be divided further in to two; Content-based characteristics and spatial configuration characteristics. According to the Kaplan’s information processing theory, the coherence, complexity, legibility and mystery which are components of spatial configuration characteristics, make a significant impact on the user preferences. Kandy, one of the main cities of Sri Lanka has a combination of natural, built and the historical characteristics. Three urban pockets of Kandy city were selected for the case studies; Lake round, Market front and Dalada veediya. Literature review, observation, mapping and questionnaire survey have been carried out in both pilot and field studies as data collection tools, for a sample of 15 persons for each location. The findings of the study lead to identify the patterns of user preference. The spaces of urban pockets with higher level of Coherence and legibility, communicate more with the visitor. The areas with moderate level of complexity and mystery also attract the visitor more. The extremes of high and low levels of complexity and mystery is more related to residents. The study also identifies that the separation of visitor and resident is best achieved not by geographical demarcations, but by the frequency of visits.