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Mapping People’s Feelings
in a Neighborhood: technique, analysis and applications
Dr. Yodan Rofé - Unit of Desert Architecture and Urban
Planning. Department of Man in the Desert. The Jacob Blaustein Institute
for Desert Research. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
SICI: 1723-0093(200408)4<T:MPFIAN>2.0.CO;2-Q
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Abstract
This paper presents a new method of surveying people’s
feelings in the environment, at the neighborhood scale. It
attempts to bridge a gap between neighbohrood quality studies
which tend to rely on aggregate assessments of well-being,
and environmental preference studies, which tend to concentrate
on physical variables only and to rely on a highly structured
set of stimuli.
The method centers on surveying people’s immediate feelings of well-being
as they walk around a neighborhood area. The subjects note down their feelings,
as they go, and according to where they feel them change. The individual
observations are then aggregated into a composite “feeling map” of
the area studied.
Three examples of feeling surveys are presented, and one is
analyzed in detail. The analysis examines the degree of agreement between
people, the sources of variation in feelings, and the correlation between
people’s sense of well-being and physical, social and functional
aspects of the neighborhood. The results show that there is a pattern of
agreement between people, professionals and laymen alike, on their feelings
in different areas of the neighborhood, and that the variation in feelings
is correlated better with location in the neighborhood, than with the socio-economic
characteristics of the observers.
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Figure 1: Berkeley’s
Southside aggregated feeling map
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Figure 2: San Francisco Trans-bay
Terminal area feeling map
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Figure 3: The Golden Gate
Neighborhood aggregated feeling map (south part only)
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The paper concludes with a discussion of the possible
use of this method in neighborhood planning and urban design. The
potential of the method as a tool in citizen participation in planning,
and as a vehicle for bridging between lay persons’ and professionals’
perspectives on the neighborhood, is highlighted. |
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Figure 8: Comparison between two buildings on
Marshall Street |
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Figure 9: Two views of the Golden Gate Library on San Pablo Ave
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Figure 10: Four views from the corner
of 56th and Gaskill Streets |
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Download the full paper (with
no images): "Mapping Peoples Feelings in
a Neighborhood: technique, analysis and applications"
(.pdf - 194 Kb) |

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