The importance of multi-sensory perception in constructing human landscape experiences has been increasingly emphasized in contemporary urban life. The aim of this study is to explore aural-visual interaction attributes that may influence people’s perceived overall soundscape comfort in urban green spaces (UGSs). To achieve this, a total of 12 perceptive indicators were identified from the existing literature to evaluate people’s perceived visual and acoustic attributes and types of sound sources, and their relations to the perceived soundscape comfort. 268 responses were obtained in a questionnaire-based survey conducted in five UGSs in Chengdu Outer Ring Ecological Zone. This was done whilst a typical objective acoustic indicator, sound level, was used as a mediator for potential changes on these relations within different sound level ranges. Results suggested that a low level of environmental sound does not correspond to higher ratings on the overall soundscape comfort. It was also found that the environmental sound level of 77 dBA was a turning point in the relation between people’s soundscape comfort and its influential indicators in UGSs. A set of six models was then provided to describe the overall soundscape comfort and its contributing indicators in aural-visual interactions, respectively, in sound level ranges below and above 77dBA.

Environmental perception studies have long been constrained by research scales due to the difficulties in obtaining users’ perceptive data and constructing their relation to environmental attributes. With the help of big data from street view images, this study compares the visual comfort of streets across four Chinese megacities with evidently distinct geographical characteristics. A multi-method approach involving traditional comfort measurements, image analysis based on deep learning algorithms and spatial mapping using geographic information systems was used to investigate the visual components of urban streets at the city scale and their influential mechanisms. In general, the four cities ranked by visual comfort were Beijing first, then Shenzhen, Shanghai and Guangzhou. The results also suggested that the spatial distribution of the four cities’ street visual comfort is obviously different. In Shanghai and Beijing, streets with a higher comfort level are mostly concentrated within the central city, while the highly comfort streets are mostly distributed along the coast and rivers in Shenzhen and Guangzhou. Thus, it is reasonable to speculate that the streets’ visual comfort relates significantly to their urban planning and construction process. Moreover, seven indicators have been identified as influential to street comfort, among which ‘vegetation’, ‘terrain’ and ‘rider’ are positive indicators, while ‘architecture’, ‘pedestrians’, ‘motorcycles’ and ‘bicycles’ have negative influences. Comparing street comfort indicators of the four case study cities, it was observed that ‘vegetation’ and ‘terrain’ have the most consistent positive influences across cities, while the high visibility of ‘building’ on streets is most likely to lead to a low level of perceived comfort. The research outcomes provide applicable cues for large-scale street evaluation research and illustrate an efficient street design approach that can both respond to local characteristics and human perceptive needs.

The importance of creating a better living environment that is conducive to public health has become increasingly prominent in the post-epidemic era. The restorative potential of urban streets has been emphasized recently, as these spaces of our everyday lives may provide people with restorative experiences. However, there is still no efficient way of delivering restorative street design, because no specific standard has been set to indicate the form such streets should take. A street has limited spaces but multiple uses; hence, the delivery of restorativeness is largely restricted by street contexts. This research proposes that this standard should be determined by the balance between street functions and restorative benefits. An expectation-current approach that involves street functions, street typologies, restorative evaluations and users’ expectations was developed in conjunction with its application to four pairs of streets. Each pair included one typical street type determined by its inherent function, and one corresponding case-study street. The restorative expectations and the streets’ current levels of restorativeness were evaluated, and their differences were used to indicate how and to what degree street-related restorative benefits should be optimized. Restorative design implications of the four case-study streets were then summarized accordingly. The expectation–current approach not only serves as a rigorous and sustainable method by stressing the balance between street functions and restorativeness, but also has the potential for application in broader assessment studies, especially when multiple environmental qualities need to be considered, with the advantage of the extensive involvement of people.

Humans perceive their surrounding environments largely through their experiences of sight and hearing. The perceived environmental information then brings on neurophysiological changes, so as to influence human emotions. These mutually influenced relations have been widely utilized by many environmental psychologists to explore potential avenues for improving human emotions through design interventions. However, to date, no efficient and accurate way has been established to describe these relationships. Inspired by Russell’s model of emotion, this study aims to develop an efficient process that uses coordinate mapping and can intuitively describe the impact of visual-aural perceptive attributes on human emotions. Taking typical urban green spaces (UGSs) in Chengdu as examples, this study first measured the visual and aural characteristics of study sites perceived by people and their emotional responses. The study then established the use of emotional status on a coordinate axis, allowing each visual-aural attribute corresponding to each emotional response to be projected onto the coordinates. Results suggested that the dataset composed of 279 evaluations could be classified into three distinct types of visual-aural settings and the distribution of emotions is evidently varied in different settings. It was found that aesthetic and order of visual aspects as well as eventful and harmonious soundscape in environments are more likely to make people feel pleasure, while openness and layering of the visual landscape can easily arouse people’s positive status. The research outcome broadens the practical path of soundscape research, centring on human emotions, experiences and feelings, such as the pleasantness and arousal raised in Russell’s theory of emotion. The study also makes an empirical contribution to the design of UGSs based on multi-sensory perception and serves the purpose of improving people’s environmental experiences.

Environmental justice research largely focuses on the allocation of public resources in terms of quantified distribution and accessibility. This study suggests that the quality of landscape equity, an important urban resource, should be evaluated as it typically appears as a combination of elements. This brings another perspective to the attention of landscape equity in addition to the provision equity: the equity in the quality and level of provision. From this perspective, this study explores the equitable role of streetscape qualities in promoting human physical, mental, and social health. Using street view images, questionnaires, artificial intelligence-based image analysis, geographic information system-based cluster analysis, and correlational analysis, the spatial distribution of health promotion streetscapes and health-influential streetscape elements were presented and compared within the scope of the Shanghai Outer Ring Road. The results disclosed an uneven distribution of streetscapes that can promote human health within research sites. Streets with poor health ratings are concentrated in the Huangpu, Hongkou, and Yangpu districts, primarily in the western part of Shanghai around Shanghai Railway Station, People’s Square, and Yuyuan Garden, where the old city centre is located. Compared with the distribution of health-influential elements, less healthy streets are more likely to be accompanied by low visibility of ‘vegetation’ and a high proportion of ‘buildings’. Streetscape design implications were then discussed in terms of providing people with equal health opportunities. Research outcomes inspired an essential quality perspective in health equity research, and it can be especially helpful when the provision and accessibility can hardly be moderated in high-density cities.