image for illustration: The Royal Crescent, Bath by Michael D Beckwith, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Conversation’s UK edition explores the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of buildings that ‘leave such an impression when you visit them that they can be forever summoned to the mind’s eye… .
The Conversation writes:
As psychologists with a particular focus on wellbeing, we… wanted to understand how people value different urban settings – and which types of building they view most positively…
How we tested urban ‘scenicness’
Our study combined two large datasets – the first from Scenic-Or-Not, a website where people rate the ‘scenicness’ of photographs taken throughout Britain… to compare the ratings of views with and without listed buildings…
In our study, the average scenicness of English urban areas was 2.43 out of 10 – significantly lower than how people rate the scenicness of natural environments…
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Impact of different features on scenicness rating:
Photographs in which the most prominent listed building was either grade I or grade II* listed were perceived more scenic than those featuring slightly less historically or architecturally significant (grade II) buildings…
