Does Intelligibility Affect Place Legibility? Understanding the Relationship Between Objective and Subjective Evaluations of the Urban Environment

Lynch has defined place legibility as the ease with which people understand the layout of a place. The concept essentially represents the composite mental image of a place. Alternatively, space-syntax literature has objectively defined the concept of intelligibility as the capacity of a space to give clues to the understanding of the system as a whole. This study contributes to understanding space-syntax theory as applied to spatial cognition by examining the effect of spatial configuration, measured by intelligibility, on place legibility, measured by sketch maps, recognition tests, and surveys. The results of the experimental study showed that the intelligibility of neighborhood layout influences place legibility. The findings of this study suggest that the space-syntax methodology could be used by urban designers and policy makers to understand and quantitatively manipulate one aspect of the environment, that is, intelligibility, which contributes to improved legibility.

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