People gain actual familiarity through direct experience of environments, but environments we have never visited can still seem familiar. To date, few academic studies have investigated this phenomenon of perceived familiarity. This paper discusses the concept of perceived familiarity and environmental preference from the perspective of people who may be asked to make judgements of future urban designs as part of the planning process. A sample of local and nonlocal people were asked to rate images of two versions (existing environment and proposed redesign) of an urban square on scales of preference and perceived familiarity. Results showed that the mean ratings for the proposed design were similar for both local and non-local samples. However, we found a clearly discernible difference in the way psychological antecedents are associated with environmental preference. For nonlocals, preference for the existing design is significantly associated with preference for the proposed design, but for local people this is not the case. In addition, for non-locals perceived familiarity of the proposed design is associated with perceived familiarity of the existing environment, but for the local sample this is not the case. Implications for public participation processes in urban design, as well as limitations and future lines of research, are discussed. “…admiration and familiarity are strangers…” George Sand 1. Introduction Previous literature has argued that familiarity plays an important role in the formation of environmental preferences [1–3]. This paper will discuss some of the issues related to the concept of familiarity and will present empirical results from a study comparing preference responses from a sample of local and non-local people in the context of the redesign of an urban square. In the preface to his book, Nasar [4] states that “good city appearance is not an abstract aesthetic phenomenon; it depends on the evaluations of the people who regularly experience the city”. This point of view stands in contrast to those designers and urban planners who believe that “good visual form” can be pared down to a series of expert rule judgements, whose description can often at best be described as vague (see [5] for a discussion of vague terminology in planning). The idea that positive aesthetic judgement might be related to the regularity or extent of experience is something that certainly deserves more academic scrutiny. Given that it is normal practice for designers to engage in projects which are geographically dispersed, it is desirable for designers to
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