Visual impact assessment of the Istanbul Land-wall

Abstract

Visual impact assessment studies are reasonably substantial to understand an environment which has different features. The aim of this study is to evaluate the visual impact of the Istanbul Land-wall and contribute to future design/planning stages. For this purpose, the study area was separated into four different spatial usages which are recreational, transportation, agricultural and neglected places. Twenty-four different photographs were taken and a survey was conducted upon an expert and a public sample group. The public survey included four parameters: well-kept, exciting, safety and beautiful scenery. The expert survey also involved four parameters which were coherence, imageability, stewardship and historicity. One-way ANOVA test was conducted to reveal sample groups’ effect on the preferences. The results showed that the average scores of photographs evaluated by public and experts were 11.07 and 9.80 scores respectively. In the public survey, the photograph, has the lowest scores for all parameters, was Photo-11 (P11). Experts’ result shows particularly that historicity is lower than the others although the area is a historical region. Specifically, neglected places obtained lower scores than the other spatial types. Consequently, the Istanbul Land-wall does not have adequate visual quality regarding the selected parameters.