An environmental preference model through ecological approaches

44086

It is observed that while some urban outdoor spaces become preferred places with many users and rich activity patterns, some others become non-preferred, abandoned places which people avoid. In this study in order to answer these kinds of questions on urban outdoor spaces, a conceptual framework is established. Instead of the approaches which take human and environment as separate entities, ecological approaches which acknowledge these two as an inseparable whole was adopted. Understanding environmental preference through concepts of ecological approaches is aimed. “Behavior Setting Theory” and “Affordance Theory”, which are products of ecological perspective on human-environment relationship, were considered, the concepts of these theories were associated with environmental preference, and a model was established and explained. Urban outdoor spaces were considered as behavior settings; components of a behavior setting like milieu, behavior pattern, synomorphy were applied to outdoor spaces. The activities performed in urban outdoor spaces defined as “behavior patterns”, the physical properties of place and time as “milieu” and consistency between the personal attributes of users and physical properties of place as “synomorphy”. Since successful urban outdoor spaces are preferred by more users than others, in these places richly various behavior patterns are observed. It was considered that, this is the result of various opportunities afforded by milieu of outdoor spaces and these opportunities can be defined by “Affordance Theory”. Thus affordance and behavior setting concepts are combined in a model and environmental preference is explained. The last part of the study contains the explanations of these concepts on a taken urban outdoor space. The activities performed in an outdoor urban space schematized through adopted concepts by this way behavior setting, milieu, affordance and synomorphy concepts were embodied.

143

Behavior setting , Affordance , Environmental preference , Urban outdoor space , Human , environment relationship , Ecological approach

Turkish Journal of Forestry

151

Turkish Journal of Forestry