Integrating Space Syntax and Emotional Mapping to Assess Visual Pollution in Urban Environments

Visual pollution in urban environments has a significant impact on aesthetic quality, level of environmental complexity, coherence, and emotional well-being. Due to that, it needs to be analysed considering not only physical environment features and indicators but also aspects of environmental psychology and human emotional needs towards the urban environment. Taking into account this approach, in this research, it is studied applying a genotype-based framework using space syntax analysis and emotional mapping. Spatial analysis tools, such as space syntax and visibility graph analysis (VGA) provide reliable tools for statistically analysing this phenomenon. This method evaluates visual exposure and connectedness to polluting components across the map, resulting in locations with the most obvious pollution (The research examines spatial metrics such as integration, connectivity, and visibility, as well as emotional responses, to reveal significant links between urban spatial configurations and the visual pollution index (VPI). Zones with great accessibility and reachable by people, such as parks and public spaces, have positive emotional responses and low VPI scores, suggesting accessibility and visual harmony. On the contrary, low-integrated and fragmented areas have high VPI ratings, suggesting visual clutter, poor maintenance, and user dissatisfaction. Visual pollution affects the quality of urban surroundings by filling the visual space with contrasting and varied elements, resulting in visual dissonance. Common sources of visual pollution include architectural forms, billboards, advertising boards, signage, and poorly maintained building façades, particularly in modernist neighbourhoods. The Dainava neighbourhood in Kaunas city is used as a case study to apply this integrated methodology, revealing spatial and emotional aspects of the neighbourhood relevant to the VPI assessment. The findings highlight the relevance of a complex methodological approach that integrates spatial and emotional qualities of the environment and the importance of targeted actions, such as improving visibility, creating visual relations, and reducing visual clutter, in establishing inclusive, legible, and visually harmonious urban spaces. This methodological framework provides urban planners with a practical tool for the evaluation of visual pollution that integrates egzogenous (physical) and endogenous (emotional) factors and has predictive capacities to indicate the environment that is the most sensitive to visual pollution.