Aesthetics of urban commercial streets from the perspective of cognitive memory and user behavior in urban environments

Abstract

Streets are one of the major elements that make-up the urban environment. Urban commercial and mixed-use street types occur as public spaces in every town and city all around the world. With the paucity of such spaces, streets have taken up to solve the problem. Hence, this study assesses the key physical, visual, and aesthetical characteristics and examines the influence of aesthetical attributes over the activity pattern, user behavioral responses, and the color palette observed. Moreover, this research has been carried out in Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, India. Four significant commercial streets were identified and featured in the main study. The research method comprehends a structured questionnaire and multiple interviews to amass data, photo elicitation, and video corroboration to identify the key visual characteristics to study and scrutinize the aesthetical responses to various attributes that make good-looking urban commercial and mixed-use street types. The results of the study indicate that the diversity and perceived pleasantness of the environment, which includes elements such as facades, colors, aspect ratios, maintenance, and vegetation, has a very close association with walking preferences. The outcome of the study would also help architects, urban designers and planners, and policy makers to create positive spaces to foster urban commercial street types as place-making and aesthetically pleasing streets.