Livingscape multi-sensory experience in urban historical places: subjective assessment from the local people and quality of the urban environment

The environmental quality of open spaces has more and more become an essential part of urban culture. The multi-sensory nature of livingscape (urban blight, soundscape, light-scape, thermal-scape, subjective user responses) assessments is acknowledged by a case study whereby the response to the sound is also based upon other sensory and behavioral elements, rather than the sound per se. Subjective environmental perceptions and objective measures (addressing acoustical, lighting and thermal parameters) data were collected in St. Salvario, an historical district in Turin, during summer 2010 and winter 2011. From an historical analysis thirteen key-spaces were selected on site which characterize past and present soundscape of the district subdivided in nodes, paths and borders. In this work only a part of the overall study is presented. Thirteen factors were singled out from the factorial analysis on environmental data collected in situ based on 33 measurement parameters. Significant correlation (p-values<0.01) among the thirteen factors and the subjective items related to environmental perception and pleasantness related to day/night-time and summer/winter period were carried out. I plots related to day/night-time and summer/winter period lightize the key-spaces behaviors for the different environmental factors and the pleasantness answers emerging from the questionnaires. Research aim to identify how the two approaches, quantitative and qualitative, and the types of knowledge produced by each, can be effectively used side by side and integrated effectively into policy and practice.