Identifying attractive and unattractive urban places: categories, restorativeness and aesthetic attributes

Abstract

In the context of research into aesthetic preferences, urban places are often considered to be part of the same broad and overgeneral category. The present study attempts to address this issue and to explore a procedure that allows us to identify categories of attractive and unattractive urban places. The research consists of two studies. The first study involves adults from Malaga (Spain), whereas the second study involves adults from Padova (Italy). The samples of residents from the two cities were asked to identify the most visually attractive and unattractive place of the city and rate the place in terms of diverse variables: the perceived restorative qualities (in terms of attention restoration theory) and the aesthetic attributes used by Nasar (1994) to describe urban environments. The most attractive place was generally either “historic-cultural” or “recreational places”, whereas the least attractive was mostly in the “housing” or “administrative categories”. The attractive place was considered more aesthetic and more restorative regarding each of the variables than the least attractive place. Aesthetic attributes do not predict attractiveness whereas the perceived restorative potential predicts attractiveness in both studies.