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Assessing the visual quality of green landscaping in rural residential areas: the case of Changzhou, China

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Abstract

Changzhou is a typical waterside municipality with approximately 2,500 years of history located south of the Yangtze River. It was an agriculturally oriented region but is becoming an industrialized region. Rural green landscaping in this region possesses characteristics of traditional Chinese gardens. This paper presents a methodology for assessing the visual quality of green landscaping in rural residential areas through public perception-based and expert/design approaches. The former approach enables us to rank green landscaping based on a survey of public preference; the latter weighs the contributions of the attributes contained in a photograph to its overall scenic beauty via correlation, regression, and factor analyses. The photographs used in the survey included road greenways, riparian greenways, residential public gardens and green landscaping around houses, with each type of landscape represented by seven photographs. In total, 141 college students and 41 other participants ranked photographs of each landscaping type from highest to lowest preference. The results indicate that the preferences of students are similar to those of the general public. Examples of green landscaping depicted in the “best” four photographs possessed more attractive qualities regarding the variety of vegetation, richness of colors and a selection of human additions compared to those depicted in the “worst” photographs. The perceived visual quality was positively influenced by, in decreasing order of importance, the variety of vegetation, color contrast, the openness of green spaces, the area of vegetation, and positive man-made elements; conversely, it was negatively influenced by the type of topography. Moreover, some suggestions were offered for future rural greening regarding perceived visual beauty.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resources Reuse, School of Environment, Nanjing University, 210046, Nanjing, China

    Yumin Yao, Xiaodong Zhu & Yangfan Li

  2. Department of Ecology, Environmental Management College of China, 066004, Qinhuangdao, China

    Yingbi Xu

  3. School of Art, Anhui University of Architechure, 230022, Hefei, China

    Haiyan Yang

  4. Faculty of Software, Cangshan District, Fujian Normal University, 350108, Fuzhou, China

    Xian Wu

  5. Nanjing University Library, Nanjing University, 210093, Nanjing, China

    Yanfeng Zhang

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  1. Yumin Yao
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  2. Xiaodong Zhu
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  3. Yingbi Xu
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  4. Haiyan Yang
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  5. Xian Wu
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  6. Yangfan Li
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Correspondence to Xiaodong Zhu.

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Yao, Y., Zhu, X., Xu, Y. et al. Assessing the visual quality of green landscaping in rural residential areas: the case of Changzhou, China. Environ Monit Assess 184, 951–967 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-011-2012-z

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