URBAN€INFILL€AND …opus.tkk.fi/softgis/documents/IAPS 2006.pdf · project called OPUS€that is€financed by the€Finnish Funding Agency for€Technology and€Innovation and€it

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OPPIVAKAUPUNKISUUNNITTELUJA ASUMISEN ARKI

URBAN INFILL ANDTHE PERCEIVED QUALITY OF THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT

Marketta KyttäCentre for Urban and Regional StudiesHelsinki University of TechnologyFinland

URBAN INFILL ANDTHE PERCEIVED QUALITY OF THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT

Marketta KyttäCentre for Urban and Regional StudiesHelsinki University of TechnologyFinland

Paper presented in 19th IAPS conference ’Environment, Health and Sustainable Development. Bibliotheca Alexandria. Egypt..

I begin my presentation with this half mystical picture ofmyself reaching something that is hard to reach. As anenvironmental psychologist I try to reveal the experiences ofinhabitants and search something that you may call ’tacitknowledge’and say that it is not a very easy task to do. Iclaim however that with appropriate methods, theories andapproaches it is not impossible at all.

During this presentation I will reveal a deep dream of myown –which is that the ’soft’perspectives from everyday lifewould be more visible in planning and design practice andthat they would be connected to the actual physical placesand settings.

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URBAN PLANNING AND EVERYDAY LIFE:A LEARNING PROCESS

softGISMapping the perceiced environmental quality

Marketta Kyttä & Maarit Kahila (2006)

opus.tkk.fi

I will also introduce a new method that I call softGIS. The studythat I am presenting I have just finished with my colleaque,geographer Maarit Kahila. The study belongs to a larger researchproject called OPUS that is financed by the Finnish FundingAgency for Technology and Innovation and it is very much aboutdeveloping new tools utilizing new technology for participativeplanning.

The perceived quality of the environment has been studied a lotboth in Finland and in other countries. The studies have produceda considerable number of criteria with which to determine eitherthe perceived environmental quality, or the general criteria for ahuman friendly environment. The criteria based studies share anessential flaw: the perceptions of the have not been attached tospecific physical environments and actual planning policies.Paradoxically, also in environmental psychology the physicalenvironment ifself has often been forgotten.

Our research and especially our softGISmethod aims to bring thephysical environment back into Environmental Psychology.

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THE BASIS OF INHABITANT FRIENDLY ENVIRONMENT:PersonEnvironmentFit

Individualpreferences andpersonal projects The qualities of

physical environment

FITg well being

UNFITg stress, conflicts

The very basic idea of personenvironment FIT was thebasis of our study. According to Daniel Stokols and manyother environmental psychologists, persons strive tomaximize the fit between their personal preferences andpersonal projects (if you wish) ON THE ONE HAND and thequalities of physical environment ON THE OTHER HAND forexample when they choose a place to settle down. Good fitproduces wellbeing while stress and conflicts may appear ifthe fit is not so good.

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URBAN PLANNING AND EVERYDAY LIFE– A LEARNING PROCESS

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND:

Gibson’s ecological psychology a nondualistic understanding of personsincontext

EnvironmentIndividual

perceived

potential

Affordances

used

shaped

actualized affordances

To operationalize the personenvironmentfit theory and totruly look at the active role of the physical environment in thisprocess, we needed a proper theory. In fact we needed atheory and concepts that do not create dualism betweenman and his environment. The notion of affordances that isused in Gibson’s ecological perceptual psychology is aworthy candidate for such a concept.

“Affordances”refer to the perceived opportunities andconstraints concerning a person’s actions in a givenenvironment, but I think that this concept can be expanded toinclude also the emotional, social, and sociocultural positiveand negative affordances that an environment offers. Theconcept breaks the subjectobject dichotomy: an affordanceis not a characteristic of the environment, nor a characteristicof the individual, but rather it is something between them.

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MY MODEL CONCERNING THE PERCEIVEDENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY

Individualquality

network

Individual preferences andprojects

IDEALENVIRONMENT

Actualizedaffordances

REALENVIRONMENT

Sirkku Huisko

Perceivedwellbeing

Here is my model concerning perceived environmentalquality. It is based of the Fit between individual affordancepreferences and the actualized affordances of the realenvironment. How far these to are define perceivedenvironmental quality and perhaps also the experiencedwellbeing of the individual.

The quality of an environment can thus be seen to consist ofan “affordance network”that includes multiple places.Individuals can, to the best of their abilities, construct theirown “affordance or quality network”according to theirpreferences, abilities, needs, mobility possibilities, andrestrictions. The study of the availability of quality factorsconnects the perceived quality also with ecoefficiency. Towhat extent are the inhabitants able to go on foot or usepublic transportation to access the affordances that matterthem personally?

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QUALITY ’FLOWER’:Some possible contents of quality factors

The contents of affordances or quality factors of individualsvary a lot. Among important quality factors can be forexample actualization of this kind of criterias in spesificsettings. All these criterias have been studied vividly inEnvironmental Psychology but far too often without thelocalization to specific settings.

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THE ACTUALIZATION OF QUALITY FACTORSAND THE URBAN INFILL POLICY

THE DENSITYOF URBAN

STRUCTURE

THE PERCEIVEDQUALITY OF

ENVIRONMENT4. SPARCELY BUILTENVIRONMENTWHERE THEPERCEIVEDQUALITY IS HIGH

2. DENSELY BUILTENVIRONMENTWHERE THEPERCEIVED QUALITYIS HIGH

1. DENSELY BUILTENVIRONMENTWHERE THEPERCEIVED QUALITYIS LOW

3. SPARCELY BUILTENVIRONMENTWHERE THEPERCEIVED QUALITYIS LOW

The political context of our study is an urban infill policy thatis a widespread attempt to create ecologically moresustainable communities. Rarely, thought, the densifcationpolicy has been studied closely tied with the perceivedquality of the living environment. Are these two incontradiction? In principle, there are these four differentpossible situations and in our study we will test this modelempirically.

It is clear that in reality the situation is more complex. Therecan for example be various ways to compensate the density:high density in one location can make an open space nearbypossible. Inhabitants may also compensate the density intheir own lifestyle. In my country in Finland people have veryoften summer cottages that they may use as an escape fromurban settings.

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Literature review

THE DENSITYOF URBAN

STRUCTURE


ENVIRONMENT

CROWDINGDensity is perceivedstressful especiallyindoors

PERVEIVEDSAFETYThe geography offear is an urbanphenomenon

NEIGHBOURINGSuitable degree ofdensity promotesespecially thedevelopment of weaksocial ties

RESTORATIONNatural environmentaffords restorationfrom stress andfatique

PHYSICAL ACTIVITYUrban sprawl is associatedwith overweight,hypertension and lowphysical activity

MOBILITYDensity promotes theuse of public transportand the accessibility ofbasic services

AESTHETICEXPERIENCESNo direct linkbetween the degree ofdensity and aestheticexperiences

URBAN HEALTHIn European contextthe life expectancy islower in denselybuilt areas

A literature review revealed that in environmentbehaviorstudies density has been mainly proven to be a stress factor.As we heard from the key note by Roderick Lawrence, inEuropean context also the health prolems concentrate indensely built areas.

But if we look at some other videly studied themes, likeneighbouring and mobility, the picture becomes morecomplex. In fact, it seems to be hard to tell, wheather densilyas a whole produces high or low level of perceived density. Itall comes back to the contents of the indidually preferredaffordances.

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Individual affordancepreferences

Actualization ofaffordances in

environments thatrepresent differentdegrees of density

PERCEIVED DENSITY AS A MEDIATED PROCESS:

Affordances as Mediators

In our study we are looking at the affordances as mediativevariables in the process of perceived density. Gary Evanshas studied similarily the role of social relations in crowding.The idea is that what a densely built setting has to offer forthe actualization of personally meaningful affordances definethe perceived density. The same level of density may be apossibility for one person and a contraint for another.

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The ’soft’GIS

a new layer into the Geographic Information System

Developing a GISbased methodfor studying the perceived environmental quality

In our project I have been able to realize an old dream ofmine about a softGIS method where the experiences ofinhabitants would be studied locality based. The experienceswould not only comprise a separate experiential world butwould have close links to the physical environment.

The soft information from the users could become anessential part of Geographic information system, with whichplanners work all the time, they would comprise a speciallayer. By localizing the experiences of the users we canproduce more useful information to the planning practice andvice versa.

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JÄRVENPÄÄ

soft

GIS

too

lsoftGIS The perceived quality of environment

This dream of mine has already came true:

In our ongoing OPUSproject we used a first version ofinternetbased SOFTGIS method.

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JÄRVENPÄÄ locates in Southern Finland

Our study in realized in Järvenpää that locates in Southernpart of Finland close to Helsinki. Järvenpää is a growingtown that attracts especially young families from Helsinkimetropolitan area.

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SubjectsN 427

Age group

3,0

8,0

13,8

9,8

13,1

17,6

10,5 10,8

6,6

4,2

0,5 1,2

02

46

810

121416

1820

1519 2024 2529 3034 3539 4044 4549 5054 5559 6064 6569 7074

%

House type

32,1 31,6

19,4

9,6

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

Single f amily house Row or detechedhouse

Block of f lat s ( 2 4storey)

Block of f lat s (5storey or more)

%

Sosioeconomic status

5,27,5

43,1

18,3

11,2

1,6 4,0 4,91,4 2,6

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

%

Family type

14,3

22,7

39,8

16,4

6,8

05

1015202530354045

Single Couplew ithout kids

Couple w ithkids

Single parentw ith kids

Other

%

Age group

Sosioeconomic status Family type

House type

During 3 months, 427 inhabitants answered to our webquestionnaire. 64 % were women, and 56 % had children. As awhole, in our sample the same kind of overrepresentation existedthat in all other surveys. So, we did not get a special internetsample.

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Geographic representativeness

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14H

aara

joki

Isok

ytö

Jam

ppa

Kaak

kola

Kesk

us

Kinn

ari

Kyrö

lä

Lepo

la

Lout

ti

Mik

onko

rpi

Myl

ly

Num

men

kylä

Paja

la

Pelto

la

Piet

ilä

Pöyt

äalh

o

Ris

tinum

mi

Satu

kallio

Satu

met

sä

Saun

akal

lio

Sorto

Terh

ola

Terio

ja

Vanh

akyl

ä

%

Respondents Inhabitants of Järvenpää

The respondents represented rather well all parts of thetown.

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Some results of sotfGIS –study

Now: let me present some results of the study.

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+

n = 427

THE CONTENTS OF QUALITY FACTORS

18ugly22child friendly

46polluted30spacious

72uncozy43good connections

74crowded75good services

83bad location80cozy

121untidy116close to nature

121insecure144well taken care of

154dense199safe, secure

230Restless, noisy220peaceful

”Real nature close by.” ”Buildings that are human scale (one family dwellings).”

The inhabitants were able to name any affordances that theypersonally value, whether it was an ability to ski in your backyard,or peacefullness or security. We had to content analyse theindividual expressions, of course.

The contents of quality factors was not surprising at all. In fact, wetend to get the same list of meaningful preferences or qualityfactors whenever we study the perceptions of inhabitants inFinland. This time we did not stay in this level on analysis.

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THE QUALITY ’FLOWER’OF JÄRVENPÄÄ

Here we have visualised the quality flower of the city ofJärvenpää. Naturally, it would be very interesting to get awhole collection of quality flowers representing theexperiences of inhabitants in various types of urban and ruralsettings.

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0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

turv

allis

uus

rauh

allis

uus*

siis

teys

luon

nonl

ähei

syys

palv

elut

viih

tyis

yys

kulk

uyht

eyde

t*

toim

inna

llisu

us**

arkk

iteht

uuri

väljy

ys*

laps

iyst

äväl

lisyy

s*

kaun

eus

sosi

aalis

uus

pientalo kerrostalo KAIKKI

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

turv

allis

uus*

rauh

allis

uus

siis

teys

luon

nonl

ähei

syys

palv

elut

viih

tyis

yys

kulk

uyht

eyde

t

toim

inna

llisu

us*

arkk

iteht

uuri

väljy

ys

laps

iyst

äväl

lisyy

s**

kaun

eus

sosi

aalis

uus

ei lapsia lapsiperheet KAIKKI

DIFFERENCES BASED ON BACKGROUND VARIABLES

no children

totalhouse

totalchildren

apartment

Different background variables produced surprisingly littlevarioation in the contents of quality factors. Whether thefamily had children or not and the house type prodeced a bitmore variation.

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+

The location of quality factors

JÄRVENPÄÄ

Negative qualityfactors

Positiive qualityfactors

The clue in the softGIS study is of course in the localization ofinhabitants’quality factors.

Here you can see how negative and positive factors localizeaccoss the town that we studied. You may notice that the negativefactors cluster to certain places more than the positive ones.

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Positive ’hot spot’: The shore and the lake

The clustered lozalisations, the hot spots, are naturallyinteresting. Here is an example of a positive hot spot; theshore of a late in the centre of the town.

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Negative ’hot spot’: The centre of the town

And an example of a negative hot spot: thecommercial centre of te town. I must say that mostof the hot spots collected both negative and positivecomments, like in this case too. Here, the nagativecomments were mosty about the restlessness of thearea at nights and weekends.

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The location of quality factors and land use+Single family house area 26 %

Street area 22 %

Public area 22 %

Parks and forests 18 %

We can look at the localization of quality factors according tothe different land use patterns of the town. We learn thatsingle family house areas collect most positive qualityfactors. If we would loók similarly the negative quality factors,we would notice that street areas and public areas woulddominate in the localizations.

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Quality factorsthematically:

Traffic network

We can also look at the localization of quality factorsthematically: here, for example we have collected all thecomments that concern traffic and show them together withthe map of the traffic network of the town. This kind of mapshould interest the traffic planner.

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Quality factorsthematically:

Green areas

Similarly, we can look at the comments concerning naturalenvironment together with the map of the green areas in thetown.

There are almost endless possibilities to analyze thelocalized experiential data together with the ’hard’information of Geographic information system.

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URBAN PLANNING AND EVERYDAY LIFE– A LEARNING PROCESS Over 10 km à 8 %

20 m 1 kmà 50 %

under 20 m à 18 %

1 3 kmà 17 %

3 10 kmà 6 %

The location of affordances:The distance from home”Järvenpää is a village like

town, familiar faces areeverywhere. Good place forchildren to grow up. Naturenext door… ”

When we looked at the location of important affordances of allinhabitants, we found that 68 % of them located less that 1 kmfrom home and 85 % within 3 km from home.

To my surprise –also for other user groups besides children theimmediate environment seems to still be very important. Even inpostmodern globalizing world we cannot see any alienation ofimmediate surroundings.

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The perceived quality of environment andthe density of urban structure

4 2 0 2 4

LAATUINDEKSI

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

ASU

NTO

JA/h

a

Kaupunkirakenteellinen jaotteluautojoukkoliikennekävelypolkupyörä

Perceived quality

Hou

sing

units

/ ha

20 housing units/ha•New urbanism•recommendation forthe usability of publictransportation in USA

Because of the theme in our study, the urban infill policy, wewanted to look especially at the density together with thelocalizations of quality factors. To study this relationship wefirst created an individual measure of density. We circledeach respondent’s home with a buffer within which wecalculated the degree of density.

When we looked at those measures together with an indexfor perceived quality that is a substraction of positive andnegative quality factors, we found that our findings tend toconcentrate on low right end of the fourfold.

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The perceived quality in different parts of Järvenpää

Index

The quality index varied also geographically. In most parts ofthe town, positive evaluations dominated, but there were afew areas, mainly densely built high rise areas, were thequality index tended to be negative.

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ns..228**.194**Perceived health

.154*.151*.267**Perceived qualityof life

ns..129*.177**General wellbeing(GHQ –scale)

The perceivedcontrol

The personalimportance ofaffordances

The actualizationof positiveaffordances

Perceived quality & wellbeing

URBAN PLANNINGAND EVERYDAY LIFE:A LEARNINGPROCESS

What about the perceived quality and wellbeing?

The actualisation of positive affordances correlated positivelywith both general wellbeing (measured with general healthquestionaire) perceived quality of life and perceived health. Itwas also interesting that the perceived control of theexistence of affordances correlated positively with perveivedquality of life.

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Results

IndividuallymeasuredDENSITY

THE ACTUALIZATIONOF AFFORDANCES PERCEIVED

WELLBEING(GHQ)

PERVEIVEDHEALTH

THE LOCATIONof affordances

(distancefrom home)

PERCEIVEDQUALITYOF LIFE

= .24***

.

= .18**

.

= .19**

.

= .18**

.

= .22***

.

URBAN PLANNINGAND EVERYDAY LIFE:A LEARNINGPROCESS

Finally: a series of regression analysis revealed that the lessdense the neighbourhood is the better is the actualization ofthe affordances. And the better the personally meaningfulaffordances actualize, the better is the perceived wellbeing,quality of life and health.

Interestingly: The location of affordances had an associationwith perceived health. The closer to home the affordanceslocated, the better was the perceived health.

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THE ESSENTIAL CHALLENGE FOR INFILLPOLICY

THE DENSITYOF URBAN

STRUCTURE


ENVIRONMENT4. SPARCELY BUILTENVIRONMENTWHERE THEPERCEIVEDQUALITY IS HIGH

2. DENSELY BUILTENVIRONMENTWHERE THEPERCEIVED QUALITYIS HIGH

1. DENSELY BUILTENVIRONMENTWHERE THEPERCEIVED QUALITYIS LOW

3. SPARCELY BUILTENVIRONMENTWHERE THEPERCEIVED QUALITYIS LOW

These findings suggest, that if we go back to the formula thatI showed in the beginning of my presentation.

It seems that a true challenge for the urban infill policy is theperceived quality of the environment. We should be able todesign the kind of densely built urban environment that doesnot threaten the essential, meaningful affordances of theinhabitants.

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softGIStools

Still a few words about the softGISmethod:

I dream that in the future there could be a whole collection ofsoftGIS methods. There could be a continuos stream of softknowledge of the users if the softGIS method would beopencontinuosly.

There could also be special theme soft GISis. We could want tolocalize for example the routes that children use when going toschool, the restorative places of the erderly or the places ofperceived danger.

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New softGIStools

City of Nurmijärvi City of MäntsäläCity of Kerava

Wihin few weeks we will open new softGIS studies in threeadditional Finnish towns. We have developed the methodfurther, which is of course a long term process.

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softGISchildren

Turku –a healthy city

There will soon also be a special softGIS tool for childrenand young people in the city of Turku. This project is a partof Turku’s healthy city project.

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OPPIVA KAUPUNKISUUNNITTELU JA ASUMISEN ARKI

PehmoGIS Ihmiselämää kartalla

Marketta Kyttä

Teknillinen korkeakouluYhdyskuntasuunnittelun

tutkimus ja koulutuskeskus

softgis

TURKU CITY OF CHILDRENAND YOUNG PEOPLE

Welcome to tell howyou feel the city of

Turku!

Click one of the buttonsand your adventure can

begin.

If you want to learnmore about these pages,look what Paavo has to

tell to you.

This softGIS will be easy to use and fun too. After collectingthe research data, we will also open a tool to look at the datainteractively. You may for examply want to see what placesfor physical activity 10yearold boys have localized.

In addition to these new softGISis we are developing at themoment a special softGIS method for studying the perceivedsafety. And as you can imagine, my ambitious plans do notend here… .

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OSALLISET PLANNINGPRACTICES

USEREXPERIENCES

TACIT KNOWLEDGE

OSALLISET DESIGN ANDPLANNING

PRACTICES

INHABITANTS’EXPERIENCES

TACIT KNOWLEDGE TACIT KNOWLEDGE

FINALLY:

As you have certainly understood, my deep aim is to try tobuilt a bridge between inhabitants and the design andplanning practice.

THIS IS MY TRUE DREAM.

With the help or diverse methods including the techniquesutilizing new technology this bridge building can succeed.

I am sure that you in this room today also work in variousways to become a bridge builder between different actors inthe complex field of urban development. Perhaps a few ofyou also share the same dream with me.

Documents

URBAN€INFILL€AND …opus.tkk.fi/softgis/documents/IAPS 2006.pdf · project called OPUS€that is€financed by the€Finnish Funding Agency for€Technology and€Innovation and€it