Abstract:
Urban recreational spaces are meant for people to gather, relax,
refresh and improve their interaction, thus should be designed
consciously and sensitively to have a positive impact on a person’s
cognition. The indicator of this impact will be the corresponding
behaviour of users. A Landscape Architect is expected to influence
the user’s movements and behaviour in creating a desired
responsive atmosphere, not only by just designing pathways or
furniture arrangements, but also by facilitating user’s movements
and behaviour patterns associated with them. Several recreational
landscape design interventions have emerged in urban areas of Sri
Lanka during the recent past which seems to function well.
However, whether these spaces really fulfil the above behavioural
need is worth investigating.
This paper intends to explore five significant factors which influence
effective human behaviour in urban public spaces applicable to
recreational landscape designs namely; variety, safety,
convertibility, scale and permeability as commonly identified by the
eminent scholars; Alexander 1977,Rapoport1977,Bentley et al,
1985and Gehl, 2010. Leading to an investigation on factors unique
to Sri Lankan context, a case study survey was implemented in
Diyatha Uyana, Baththramulla (n=30) and Urban wetland park,
Nugagoda(n=30) with the use of questionnaires, behavioural
mapping, observations and then analysed with spatial syntax
software.
Design following behaviour as well as design against behaviour was
observed in both cases. Diyatha Uyana was ranked comparatively
high with reference to all the factors tested dominated by variety
over Urban Wetland Park. Lack of convertibility, sense of scale,
safety and sensitivity to the psychophysiological and behavioural
requirements of human beings related to recreation were found to
be the weak points inducing design against behaviour of the users
and needs careful attention in future recreational landscape design
interventions.
Citation:
De Silva, S, A., & Hettiarachchi, A., (2016).Factors influencing the effectiveness of human behavior in designed landscapes: two case studies in Sri Lanka. In J. Wijesundara, & R. Dayaratne,(Eds.). Proceedings of the International Conference on Cities, People and Places ICCPP 2016. (pp. 164-180). Department of Architecture, University of Moratuwa.