Place Identity Along Highways: Location Choice of Elements Using Distance and Isovist Measures: Fid-Bau Portal

Place Identity Along Highways: Location Choice of Elements Using Distance and Isovist Measures

Ophylia Vinodhini, G. / Meenatchi Sundaram, A.

The aspects of physical environment help to link the dynamic understanding of people–place connect. Visibility to identity elements is a consequential aspect, notably across travel routes. It is significant to understand the degree of visibility from a vantage point along the travel routes, to define, characterize, and maximize the sense of orientation for drivers and travellers. The necessity arises to refer to the questions of a traveller or driver on the distance, spatial coverage, and enclosure of the visible spatial territories. The visibility of the volume of space together with a specification of the location of that point from the given point in space is an isovist. The isovist measures are appropriate tools to calculate, represent, and thereby develop analysis to formulate urban design strategies based on the visual aspects. This paper aims at identifying the relationship between the location choice and the visual access to the identity elements along a highway. Distance-based location choices are studied to generate relationships between distance, speed, and travel time in three criteria. Evaluation of Visibility with the help of a simulation tool [1] in two forms of urban nodes with significant natural, cultural, and social elements, resulting in 32 isovist maps are generated with 16 maps for each node. The degree of visibility concerning the openness from highway and placement of elements are extractions from the analysis. The results show that the visibility of elements and the location characteristics contribute to the awareness of place identity along travel routes.