Two worlds of residents: Car owners look at s

Researchers from HSE University and St. The study was published in Urban forestry and urban greening.

In many countries, new urban areas are filled with lifeless parking lots and virtually no green space. And while urban dwellers love spending time in green parks, they continue to accept barren courtyards for new residential developments.

The study, conducted by HSE University and SPSUACE, used eye-tracking technology to study how residents view the common courtyards of apartment buildings.

The researchers took two groups of participants — those who own a car and those who don’t — and showed them pictures of common yards, and asked the subjects to rate their attractiveness. A total of 20 car owners and 20 people without a car participated in the study.

The researchers found that the longer people looked at trees (green spaces), the more attractive the yards seemed to them. And vice versa: the longer they look in the parking lots, the more they find the area unattractive. Analysis of the computational data confirmed the relationship between time spent looking at trees and the attractiveness of yards, with an opposite negative effect from looking at parking lots. On average, a double increase in interest in green spaces makes a patio 30% more attractive.

Car owners find courtyards full of parking spaces and no trees less attractive than those without a car. But among car owners, the relationship between time they spend looking at trees and their rating of the yard as particularly attractive turns out to be the strongest. Green spaces affected car owners 33% stronger than participants without cars.

The results show an internal conflict between city dwellers who own a car: on the one hand, they are interested in additional parking spaces, but still highly value green spaces. Resolving such internal tensions in different groups of city dwellers will likely help restore comfortable green spaces to our cities, said Vasily Klocharev, project coordinator and director of the HSE Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience.

Architects often underestimate the importance of green spaces while planning construction. Together with the Health, Safety and Environment Laboratory, we used a contemporary eye-tracking method to study the interest of urban residents. Our results confirmed that the more people took an interest in green spaces, the more they evaluated urban areas positively. These studies are very important for changing the philosophy of architects and developers, to understand the preferences of the residents and the potential conflicts between different groups of the population,” Sepsos.

“In our studies, we try to get to the reason we accept concrete in modern construction and forget that green spaces in cities are essential, first of all, for our health. Trees reduce air pollution, protect us from noise and heat, and reduce the chances of developing heart and psychological disorders. Moreover, Canadian researchers recently demonstrated that having ten more trees in an apartment building improves health cognition in ways that are comparable to being seven years younger. That is why we will make sure to continue our studies on how the development of green spaces affects people,” added Vasily Klocharev.

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