Walking Narratives: Interacting Between Urban Nature And Self (original) (raw)

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ABSTRACT Many studies have investigated users’ interactions with the landscape where methods used were highly dependent on static representations and supported on image based-models and where the user is standing detached from the experience. This perspective undervalues experiencing the landscape as a whole and contrasts with our proposal to provide insights on perceiving and sensing it in the course of active engagement, such as walking through, bringing a self-perspective and an interpretative construction of the experience as a participant. This work aims to investigate how people perceive and interact with urban nature, examining the emotional responses to designed landscapes, involving user based narratives, and to explore links between places and individuals, memories and attachment. For research purposes two case study areas have been established, one in Portugal and another in the UK, on the basis that they are both designed landscapes with a certain range of different environments and well established user/visitor groups. Participants were selected from everyday users and landscape architects and invited to engage in a set of environment encounters based on self-narrated walks and reflective diaries during a period of 6-9 months encompassing at least two contrasting seasons. This approach allowed obtaining user complex personal descriptions, meanings and understandings into how the places were experienced. Research identified the unique aspects of place attachment and memory retrieval that accompanies self-narrated walking involving the movement from everyday places to special places. Participants demonstrated that walking on their own allowed them to transcend and explore their “self-world”, to uncover unique feelings, emotions and moments. These are drawn from their memories, the mental and physical reinterpretation and reconstruction of past experiences and spaces. The interactions involved were revealed by the individuals narrations and demonstrated a profound sense of personal renewal involving a closeness with “nature”, reinforcing a sense of the self. Findings emphasized the importance of memory in the ways that individuals interact with the landscape prompted by the immediacy of the moment that they occur and further our understanding of the restorative qualities of urban nature. Additionally, personal narratives exploring emotional responses of individuals to designed landscapes can contribute to landscape architecture research by challenging the design of such places and new ways of engagement.

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