Qualitative content analysis: Components influencing the city structure imageability

Aims: The structure of the city, as one of the main components of the city, which has a significant impact on the citizens’ understanding of the city as a whole and it provided imageability of the city. The process of forming people’s mental image of the city structure is formed following how they interact with the surrounding environment. This study explores the components influencing the imageability of city structures, emphasizing the interplay between physical, functional, and semantic dimensions in shaping citizens’ mental images of urban environments. As cities expand, the complexity of urban structures grows, making it challenging to maintain coherence and legibility. Methodology: The current research method is “descriptive-analytical”, the research is “fundamental” in terms of nature, and its approach is “qualitative” with an inductive approach, examining 145 scientific texts (articles, books, and theses) from 1940 to 2024 to identify key factors affecting urban structure imageability. the present research is in three stages (ready creation, organization and reporting). The selection of texts was done with targeted sampling and manual coding. Findings: The findings reveal that urban structure imageability is shaped by three primary dimensions: physical (e.g., spatial connectivity, landmarks), functional (e.g., movement patterns, activity centers), and semantic (e.g., cultural, historical meanings). The study highlights the importance of legibility, coherence, and complexity in creating a clear mental image of the city, which in turn influences citizens’ behavior and spatial cognition. Conclusion: A conceptual model is proposed, integrating these dimensions to enhance urban design and planning practices. The research underscores the need for a balanced approach that considers both the objective physical structure and the subjective mental perceptions of citizens, offering valuable insights for creating more legible and imageable urban environments, and what is important in evaluating the visualization of the urban structure is the relationship between the elements, not the coherence of each element alone.