Abstract
The relationship between the ‘constituents of a place’ and its 'character’ has throughout been a matter of research for many studies in planning and urban design. In all previous studies this relationship has often been conceptualized as one-way process based upon environmental determinism. Therefore, character of a place is conventionally regarded as a static phenomenon affected by the physical changes in the built environment. Contesting this conventional understanding, this study models the relationship between the physical environment of a place and its character as a mutually trading and ever evolving phenomenon that has to be conceptualized only through a comprehensive understanding of the process than the resultant static end-situations. With the changing urban environment in a major street in Colombo this study demonstrates that individuals’ experience shapes the place character and the same character generated by the individuals’ reproduction process of the place in turn shapes their own experience, and such experience then shapes their cognition of the place, which is a cyclic process. The demonstrative model suggests that neither the memory of the place nor the perception of its character are internal to individuals, while neither the shaping of the physical environment nor the generated character of the place are external to its users. Rather, the place, its charterer and its experience are results of a process of transactions between the place and its users. Such a comprehensive understanding of the complexity of a place character is important for planners and urban designers to successfully engage in making responsive urban environments. The study is based on the concept of 'Synergetic Inter-Representation Network Model' proposed by Portugali and Haken (1996) and the ‘Transactional theory’ by Wapner (1987) to model the character of the place and its relationship with the physical environment in a novel manner. The physical changes in the environment and the user experience are elicited in the form of participatory observation, sketch maps, photographic surveys and in-depth interviews.
Highlights
Analyses of the place character are often vague and implicit
The place character is not something out there in the environment as most of the studies conventionally suggest that place character is often limit to physical understanding, and not something we construct in our mind as constructionists suggest of a composition of the psychological paradigms
Place character is a process of experiencing of the environment as a result of 'what is there', as well 'we reconstruct' a result of our own behavior on our previous knowledge of the place with what was contributed by the others
Summary
Analyses of the place character are often vague and implicit. Because, the place is an evolutionary concept in the life of a human being; it reveals the external bonds of a person's existence, and it is a profound and complex aspect of his or her experience of the world (Dayarathna, 1998). More recently following classical cognitive science, studies on cognition turned their attention to this B-B, in search of the internal processes of the mind, that is to say, to the way the mind/brain encodes stories and decodes information from the Comparing behaviorism and classical view, one can see that beyond the differences and the two approaches share a common property: in both mind and environment are perceived as two essentially independent, and casually related entities. Identified two variables of the physical changes in the environment and the corresponding changes in the perceived place character, data collection was carried out; through the user’s experience of the place considering two context of prior to the redevelopment and the after the redevelopment with the changing urban environment in a major street in Colombo this study select the three distinct nodes on the Galle road considering several criteria as follows (See table: 01). The followings are the focused areas of content of the indepth interviews
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