Song GUO(郭凇)

The visual appearance of a city is shaped by a complex interplay of factors, including cultural backgrounds, geographical features, historical developments, and policy decisions. But measuring cities’ visual uniqueness remains a challenge. Previous studies often focused on iconic landmarks, neglecting everyday scenes that people are likely to encounter. By examining how and to what extent different visual patterns build up unique characteristics of cities, we propose a data-driven framework to measure visual uniqueness in terms of identity and distinctiveness. We performed bottom-up visual clustering on Google Street View (GSV) images in the six most visited Japanese cities. We found that 8 representative visual clusters explain each city’s visual identity and relative distinctiveness. This research demonstrates how artificial intelligence applied to visual data can reveal subtle differences in urban environments. In the era of growing globalization, with frequent tourism and intercity visits, the cultivation of a city’s unique visual characteristics can help avoid the homogenization of urban landscapes, and stimulate the development of urban tourism by shaping an imageable city.

Exposure to nature influences urban dwellers’ well-being and happiness, thereby impacting urban sustainability. However, urban dwellers are exposed to nature in different ways: indirect exposure through window views, incidental exposure when walking along streets, and intentional exposure when visiting parks. Moreover, objective exposure does not necessarily align with how people perceive their exposure to nature. This study examines how three types of objective nature exposure—indirect, incidental, and intentional—provided by greenery and water bodies, along with perceived exposure, impact happiness in Tokyo, Japan. To measure the objective exposure, we use 3D photorealistic city information models, street view imagery, road network datasets, and remote sensing imagery. To measure happiness and perceived nature exposure, we use data from a national survey, focusing on the results from 10,798 residents in 801 neighborhoods in Tokyo. Results showed that perceived nature exposure has higher explanatory power for happiness than objective exposure. Views of greenery from windows (indirect exposure) and proximity to parks (intentional exposure) influenced perceived nature exposure and happiness the most. The quantitative evidence suggests that urban planning align with human behavior, e.g., by prioritizing the improvement of greenery views from windows and park accessibility in Tokyo to promote urban sustainability.

Traditional design decision-making is usually a process of adapting and reusing the paradigm at the architect’s disposal based on intuition and experience, which helps to provide acceptable solutions to known design problems quickly but makes it challenging to generate new spatial types beyond the existing paradigm. The emergence of informal learning behaviors has caused changes in public learning spaces, and traditional design decision-making processes have struggled to provide better solutions. Based on 620 questionnaires, this study combines statistical and space syntax analysis to obtain the relationship between user preferences and space. It uses multi-agent simulation to interpret preferences into spatial forms to assist design in obtaining a more suitable spatial layout pattern for informal learning scenarios. Proposing a design decision-making method to solve complex behavior-driven problems effectively, this research will help to integrate research and design effectively, improve the efficiency and accuracy of design decision-making.

Based on the comparative analysis of texts, images and material objects of jingqingzhai (Jingxinzhai) at Beihai Park, this paper deduces jingqingzhai’s space duringthe Qianlong period. On this basis, it attempts to clarify the concept of "scene" in landscape research, and tentatively represents and analyzes some spatial scenes of jingqingzhai as depicted in Qianlong’s poems, in hopes of upgrading the understandings of the "scene" as an experience and design unit.