How urban wellbeing is influenced by spatial urban parameters (density, morphology, vegetation & commerce), as examined in a VR framework

Abstract

Urban environments face the serious challenge of complying with relatively tight constraints regarding land and tenant density. In fact, this has become a key constraint in both current and future urban designs. Moreover, wellbeing is strongly influenced by urban planning and design decisions. The objective of this study was to examine the effect of spatial parameters on the wellbeing of potential dwellers through VR experiments. The research incorporated two experiments that were conducted in a VR laboratory, by manipulating virtual twins of an existing urban environment. The first experiment focused on increased density levels combined with commerce and vegetation, while the second one focused on variant morphologies within a fixed density level. The results indicate that morphology, density, vegetation, and commercial activity have a significant impact on people’s wellbeing. The findings of this research emphasize certain design principles that could improve urban designs that are part of densification processes.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban wellbeing
• urban density and densification
• urban morphology
• building morphology
• experiments in VR
• urban greenery

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the following researchers for their assistance in conducting the statistical analyses and design for this study: Dr. Tatiana Umansky and Dr. Ati Duba from the Statistics Lab, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and Dr Miki Haifler, from the Sheba Tel Hashomer Medical Centre in Israel. We would also like to thank System Administrator Mr. Doron Zur from the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology for his ongoing technical skills and support throughout the study. We thank Arch. Eli Greenberg and his students in the ‘Space Mapping and Analysis Methods’ Course (course no. 205928), for participating experiment 2. We are very grateful for their important contribution to the research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2018: https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018-revision-of-world-urbanization-prospects.html.

2 IBM statistical software platform.

Additional information

Funding

This research was financially supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant number 1485/15).