Designing the image and the perception of the city and its’ brand: the importance and impact of qualitative urbanistic elements
Andrej Pompe
GEA College, Slovenia
andrej.pompe@gea-college.si
Abstract
Quantitative and qualitative elements define urbanism. They have an important role in the process of designing the image and the perception of the city and its brand. Modern cities evolve rapidly and compete intensely to project an attractive visual image and then link it to cultural and economic activities. Qualitative urbanism elements define the quality of living in a city and directly affect human perception of space. They produce feelings and generate attitudes. They strongly influence on the image and the perception of a city and its brand. Feelings of comfort come from a total perception of our environment and are the result of a synthesis of objective and subjective feelings. The purpose of this paper was to evaluate some important indicators of qualitative urban elements and evaluate them according to city residents’ and city visitors’ responses in Slovenia: context, accessibility, variety, readability, flexibility, visual suitability and diversity. Results represent their recognition of indicators that have the biggest (and the weakest) impact on designing the city and building perception of its brand: values, living conditions and environmental balance.
Keywords: city; perception; urbanism; city brand; qualitative urbanistic elements (QUE)