Public preferences towards naturalistic and designed landscape pattern in park area / Noralizawati Mohamed

Landscape preference research has been widely discusse d in the fields of landscape
architecture and environmental psychology. A forum on urban and park as natural
resources, held at IFLA World Congress 2007 concluded that urban people are
becoming more aware and concerned about the quality of urban parks and urban
forest parks.
In previous research findings, it was noted that the public was influenced and
responded differently towards different types of landscape patterns in both types of
park areas due to many reasons. Previous researches depict that the nat uralistic
landscape pattern in urban forest parks are preferred by people because it may
provide benefits in terms of ecology and psychology. However, a certain number of
researches found that some people preferred urban forest parks lesser due to the
landscape pattern of the area which might contribute to a frightening or unsafe
feeling and that it appears disorganised. It was found that the public are more
comfortable with a neat, formal and tidy approach in designed landscape patterns in
urban park areas.
Therefore, the purpose of this research is to investigate the public preferences
towards the naturalistic and designed landscape patterns. The publics’ preferences
towards these landscape patterns are investigated using a questionnaire survey that
is divided into 3 sections. Section A deals with questions on the demographi c
background of the respondents, Section B deals with questions on preferences
towards photographs using the Likert scale and Section C consists of open -ended
questions.
The results revealed that the public preferred both types of landscape patterns with
a mean value at 3.27 for the naturalistic approach (Canopy Walkway Trail) and
3.22 for the designed approach (Metropolitan Park). Even though the statistical
means depict slight differences, this research found that there are still significant
differences between the publics’ preferences to the landscape patterns based on the
photographs that were rated by the respondents. It confirmed that in naturalistic
landscape patterns, the responde nts preferred the natural elements and natural
arrangement scenes while in the designed landscape pattern, they preferred the
facilities elements and formal arrangement scenes. It is hoped that the preferred
scenes by the respondents can be maintained and the ones not preferred be
improved upon in future.