Applied neuroscience in the research of place

There is a continuous dialogue between the physical environment and the brain's functions. The human constructs the physical environment and subsequently makes physical interventions to it, and this physical environment with its all different attributes affects the way that the human's brain functions. The brain starts receiving the environmental information, through the five senses, upon its first exposure to a physical environment. Accordingly, the way that the brain responds to the received environmental information determines people's environmental emotions, perceptions, and behaviour (see Figure 1). These perceptions and behaviour have long been explored in environmental behaviour and psychology studies. Similarly, neuroscientists have studied the brain's functions and structures in relation to the physical environment. However, spatial designers have paid little attention to the findings of these studies, especially, neuroscientific studies. The spatial design disciplines, namely, architecture, urban design, urban planning, and landscape design, are known as user-centred disciplines. As such, it is important for them to understand how physical environments affect people's brain's functions, cognitions, and environmental behaviour. Gaining such knowledge thereby enables spatial designers to design environments which are more responsive to people's cognitive needs and that can support the brain's functions

Morphology of Urban Villages in China: A Case Study of Dayuan Village in Guangzhou

Urban villages play an important role in providing affordable housing to urban migrants in Chinese cities. They are considered as supplementary to the dual rural-urban system in China. Of central importance to studying urban villages is how the morphology of these informal settlements affects urban life. It is essential for urban planners and designers to examine the morphology of urban villages. This paper, therefore, investigates the morphology of urban villages using the case study of Dayuan Village in Guangzhou, China. The morphology of this urban village is tested against four main elements of urban morphology: urban density, accessibility, functional mix, and urban interface. Our results revealed that the type of street within the urban village has considerable influence on accessibility, functional mix, and urban interface. Regarding urban density, our results show that buildings’ height is not influenced by the centrality of buildings nor land value; however, it is likely that it is affected by planning agreements between the village committee and the local government. Land coverage does not comply with the planning regulation for residential districts. Regarding accessibility analysis, the number of entrances to streets is influenced by the type of street under analysis. The distribution of different types of functional mix is also affected by the type of street within the urban village. The buildings with a mix of ‘live/visit’ are concentrated along the formal streets and primary inner streets. The mono-functional use of ‘live’ and the bi-functional mix of ‘live/work’ are mostly located in the secondary inner streets. Regarding urban interface, our results demonstrate that the formal streets have an interface with considerable porosity, and that this can contribute to the livelihood of the immediate area

The effects of using GPS systems on spatial knowledge acquisition and the respective role of spatial design

Navigation is one of the very first and common spatial behaviours that human-beings do within the physical environment; it is defined as a process of moving within the place with a goal of reaching a destination in a timely manner. This behaviour might seem to be a simple task since it is very common; however, it involves many multilevel cognitive processing and thus has received considerable attention from different disciplines. The recent emergence of Location-Based Services and the use of its popular form as mobile navigation systems by people in their everyday life have had a significant impact on navigation process. As people are increasingly using mobile navigation systems, research from a broad range of disciplines has examined the effectiveness of these systems, some of which have picked up worrying signs related to their use. One of these issues is concerned with spatial knowledge acquisition. The empirical studies, using different methods, have examined the effects of information provision by mobile navigation systems on people’s spatial knowledge acquisition; they have studied the extent of which, people who use mobile navigation systems, can comprehend the physical environment comparing to those who do not use such systems or use other types of assistance, such as physical maps; or how accurately they can remember the location of the physical elements such as landmarks and spatial organisation between them, as well as how well they can estimate distances and directions between places. These studies have often demonstrated that mobile navigation systems are not very effective tools in helping people to acquire spatial knowledge. Nonetheless, there is a lack of study on the relationship between the physical features of the physical environment and the extent of spatial knowledge acquisition by mobile navigation systems. Research has shown that the physical environment, which navigation takes place within, is known as a key determinant in helping people to acquire spatial knowledge and has found many spatial factors of the physical environment that are influential on people’s spatial knowledge acquisition, such as specific positions of landmark along the route, the form and length of routes, the shape and form of landmarks, the configurational complexity of the environment, the number of turns along a route, and the number of intersections linked together in a given setting. However, analysing the influence of such spatial factors on spatial knowledge acquisition of people using mobile navigation system has received little attention. This thesis has two objectives, firstly to compare the spatial knowledge acquisition of pedestrians who used GPS for navigation in an unfamiliar urban environment in comparison to those who navigate the same environment without assistance, non-GPS group; and secondly, to identify the spatial factors that are influential on their spatial knowledge acquisition. To this end, this thesis firstly discusses the research background on studying the effects of using mobile maps on people’s spatial knowledge acquisition as well as the intersection of spatial factors and spatial knowledge acquisition in navigation. The thesis then compares spatial knowledge acquisition among GPS and non-GPS groups, that have been through the study site, by using the method of sketch map drawing. Furthermore, the thesis examines the association between the extent to which the elements of the physical environment, specifically, landmarks, paths, and nodes are depicted correctly in the sketch maps amongst the two groups and their physical- spatial features in real world. The degree of depiction correctness of each element in the sketch maps are then examined for paths in relation to the path length and the number of turns along them in the real world as well as the existence of internal/external landmarks long the path; for nodes, they were tested in relation to the number of the node-legs, and existence of landmarks at their corners; for landmarks, their visibility to the participant in the site was tested. Also, a photo recognition test was used as a method to assess the two groups’ (GPS, and non-GPS) visual knowledge of the site. A correlational study was then conducted to determine the relationship between the visual knowledge of the participants and the physical features of the elements in the site. This study is grounded in the conceptual framework of Environment and Behaviour (E & B). Studying urban environments and their impact on residents’ spatial cognition is a subarea of E & B studies, which aims to contribute to people’s quality of life and well-being. It also can shed light on the spatial decision-making and behaviour of individuals. In practice, the applicability of cognitive studies can inform the future urban design and planning for a better living and working environment

Access to Small Airports and the Impact on Regional Growth in the UK

This paper focuses on how the accessibility of small airports affects the regional growth in the UK. Three airports that have less than two million passengers annually, are used for this study: Bournemouth, Cardiff International and London Southend Airport. The purpose of this study is threefold: 1) to investigate how the size of an airport influences growth and provides planning authorities support for permitting development around the airport, 2) to examine the impact that improving accessibility has on smaller airports, and 3) to analyse how regional development plans consider airports when airport developments occur. To this end, secondary data was used to analyse the current growth patterns linking economic indicators to airport use. Evaluating the accessibility of each small airport with the transport network by using a variety of databases and navigation software. Overall conclusions of this study show that the size of an airport is not as significant as the stability of the airports growth in influencing economic growth. Accessibility was found to improve regional growth around the airport and that the road network provided the best access due to the location of the case-study airports. Regional development plans considered airports as a gateway to drive economic growth with specific industries being supported. However, there is concern around airports for their development into greenbelts due to “exceptional circumstances” by the National Planning Policy Framework. Provision of independent development plans related solely to airports reduces the decision duration by local authorities

The image of the city in the information era

This paper presents the early stages of a PhD research which attempts to analyze the effect of using digital mobile devices on the process of city imaging in The Information Era. Within this process, some guidelines are suggested in order to facilitate the design of the physical urban environment as well as the design of technologies with location-based systems and navigators

Spatial knowledge acquisition in the process of navigation: A review

Spatial cognition has become an increasingly important area of study since it represents a major type of human knowledge with considerable practical significance. The general assumption is that people’s spatial knowledge forms people’s spatial behaviour, such as navigation, in the environment. However, there are some critical issues within this area, including: how such knowledge is represented and organised, the mechanisms by which it is activated, and the elementary and higher-level cognitive processes that function upon the knowledge base to produce new knowledge as well as the factors that are influential on acquiring spatial knowledge. The theories regarding spatial knowledge acquisitions have attempted to address these issues. This paper discusses these issues by reviewing the literature. As such, the paper firstly provides the research background on spatial knowledge acquisition and the theories of spatial knowledge development. Secondly, the paper debates the main factors affecting acquiring and forming knowledge about the environment. In doing that, the effects of two main factors are discussed: 1) the means of spatial knowledge acquisition (direct experience, physical map, and mobile maps), and 2) the role of different properties of physical environment

The effects of using GPS systems on spatial knowledge acquisition and the respective role of spatial design

Navigation is one of the very first and common spatial behaviours that human-beings do within the physical environment; it is defined as a process of moving within the place with a goal of reaching a destination in a timely manner. This behaviour might seem to be a simple task since it is very common; however, it involves many multilevel cognitive processing and thus has received considerable attention from different disciplines. The recent emergence of Location-Based Services and the use of its popular form as mobile navigation systems by people in their everyday life have had a significant impact on navigation process. As people are increasingly using mobile navigation systems, research from a broad range of disciplines has examined the effectiveness of these systems, some of which have picked up worrying signs related to their use. One of these issues is concerned with spatial knowledge acquisition. The empirical studies, using different methods, have examined the effects of information provision by mobile navigation systems on people’s spatial knowledge acquisition; they have studied the extent of which, people who use mobile navigation systems, can comprehend the physical environment comparing to those who do not use such systems or use other types of assistance, such as physical maps; or how accurately they can remember the location of the physical elements such as landmarks and spatial organisation between them, as well as how well they can estimate distances and directions between places. These studies have often demonstrated that mobile navigation systems are not very effective tools in helping people to acquire spatial knowledge. Nonetheless, there is a lack of study on the relationship between the physical features of the physical environment and the extent of spatial knowledge acquisition by mobile navigation systems. Research has shown that the physical environment, which navigation takes place within, is known as a key determinant in helping people to acquire spatial knowledge and has found many spatial factors of the physical environment that are influential on people’s spatial knowledge acquisition, such as specific positions of landmark along the route, the form and length of routes, the shape and form of landmarks, the configurational complexity of the environment, the number of turns along a route, and the number of intersections linked together in a given setting. However, analysing the influence of such spatial factors on spatial knowledge acquisition of people using mobile navigation system has received little attention. This thesis has two objectives, firstly to compare the spatial knowledge acquisition of pedestrians who used GPS for navigation in an unfamiliar urban environment in comparison to those who navigate the same environment without assistance, non-GPS group; and secondly, to identify the spatial factors that are influential on their spatial knowledge acquisition. To this end, this thesis firstly discusses the research background on studying the effects of using mobile maps on people’s spatial knowledge acquisition as well as the intersection of spatial factors and spatial knowledge acquisition in navigation. The thesis then compares spatial knowledge acquisition among GPS and non-GPS groups, that have been through the study site, by using the method of sketch map drawing. Furthermore, the thesis examines the association between the extent to which the elements of the physical environment, specifically, landmarks, paths, and nodes are depicted correctly in the sketch maps amongst the two groups and their physical- spatial features in real world. The degree of depiction correctness of each element in the sketch maps are then examined for paths in relation to the path length and the number of turns along them in the real world as well as the existence of internal/external landmarks long the path; for nodes, they were tested in relation to the number of the node-legs, and existence of landmarks at their corners; for landmarks, their visibility to the participant in the site was tested. Also, a photo recognition test was used as a method to assess the two groups’ (GPS, and non-GPS) visual knowledge of the site. A correlational study was then conducted to determine the relationship between the visual knowledge of the participants and the physical features of the elements in the site. This study is grounded in the conceptual framework of Environment and Behaviour (E & B). Studying urban environments and their impact on residents’ spatial cognition is a subarea of E & B studies, which aims to contribute to people’s quality of life and well-being. It also can shed light on the spatial decision-making and behaviour of individuals. In practice, the applicability of cognitive studies can inform the future urban design and planning for a better living and working environment