Evaluating the restorative potential of different green strategies in streets

Abstract

Today's lifestyles cause people to deal with more stress, which in turn leads to mental health issues in cities around the world. For pedestrians, urban sidewalks are places they typically interact with during their daily commute. Thus, pedestrians have the opportunity to stroll and recover in urban streets before heading home. Therefore, if urban streets are designed to have restorative characteristics, they can improve the mental health of humans. According to previous research, green spaces have always been known to have restorative properties. However, the influence of natural features on the mental health of people has been investigated for a long time. There is still a need for new research to determine the ideal green strategies according to their restorative potentials that will positively impact human mental health and wellbeing. These suggestions state that It is necessary to identify urban green areas that promote mental health and develop green strategies that enable people to recognize the restorative qualities of these areas. In this context, this study aimed to examine and measure the restorative potential of different green strategies from the perspective of pedestrians to understand their preferences for green spaces and identify which green strategy has the greatest effect on them. The participants of this study are expected to walk around the street scenes prepared from 3D models and answer the questionnaire questions. The questionnaire is organized to evaluate different scenes while they are visiting these places. In this study, a virtual reality (VR) supported system has been used to examine people's perceptions and responses to different green strategies presented to them, giving a more realistic sense of being in the proposed areas. In the experimental study, we presented participants with scenes of the environments on a 6.4-inch phone screen embedded in VR glasses. Participants can view various green strategies that occupy the space between streets, sidewalks, and buildings within the survey scope. In the virtual environment that the participants will experience, the relationships between the driveway, green space, sidewalks, gardens, and building facades in different street sections are modeled in the computer environment using virtual reality glasses. With various green strategies applied, 16 experimental conditions from the same environment design were represented (4 Facade types × 4 Sidewalk vegetation types). The scenes represent four different types of vegetation on sidewalks: 1) Trees, 2) Shrubs, 3) Grass, 4) Without vegetation, and four different facade types: 1) Open front yards, 2) Hedge vegetation, 3) Green wall, 4) Solid wall. In this thesis, we approached potential participants from four different groups, two main groups of people from the architectural discipline and people who are not from the architectural discipline, and two subgroups of undergraduate students and professionals (employees or graduate students). We chose these groups to understand whether education and employment status affect people's perceptions and preferences. In the context of the experimental based questionnaire's structure, the first section contains questions to understand the user characteristics of the study. In the second section, we investigate whether participants prefer seeing green areas in places between sidewalks and streets and in building facades within sixteen models. In the third section, participants will rate the remaining scenes from the previous section based on their restorative potential. Finally, in the last section, participants will rate a selected scene from the previous section using the seven questions from the Perceived Restorativeness (PRS) Scale to measure the restorative properties of the setting. These questions are grouped according to their intended subscale assignment from Attention Restoration Theory's (ART) four components (Fascination, Being away, Extent, and Compatibility) and the restorative potential component. As a result of this thesis, in terms of green space preferences, all fifty participants preferred to see green areas between sidewalks and streets and on the facades of buildings. Regarding the restorative potential of different green strategies, most participants find the model with trees in areas between sidewalks and streets and open front yards in building facades to be the most restorative. In terms of the restorative properties of the model with the highest score (from the previous section), a positive correlation between "Restorative Potential" and "Fascination," "Being Away," "Extent," and "Compatibility" was found using Pearson correlation. Fascination" was positively correlated only with "Compatibility," while the relationship between "Fascination" and "Being away" and "Extent" was insignificant. "Being away" was positively correlated with both "Extent" and "Compatibility." Finally, "Extent" was positively correlated with "Compatibility". The findings of this thesis offer scientific evidence about the features of an urban green space that people prefer most in terms of its potential for restorative action to policymakers and planners who are charged with designing urban street green spaces. If urban green environments are designed with the desired characteristics and space preferences, the perceived restorative effect of the places on people will likely increase.