Examining interaction of city legibility and sense of security

Abstract

The city is an ongoing changing structure because of reflection of ongoing changes of cultures. Sense of belonging and sense of security to environment increase the level of liveability of a city in this ongoing changing structure. People get used to a legible environment easily and legibility of space increases the sense of security and the familiarity. In this study, the interaction of legibility of city and sense of security is examined via streets. Hasköy area, which belongs to Istanbul Beyoglu District that is an old settlement, is chosen as the investigation field. Osgood semantic differential scale is used for this research as method. This method is performed within first and third grade psychology students and the results are compared. The differences or similarities in the spatial evaluation of participants are measured over photographs of the 6 streets which are classified in terms of landmarks, building-age-state, greenery, enclosure, mystery, perspective, and coherence. In addition, the relationship between legibility of streets and sense of security is evaluated.