2019 journal article
Modeling the connection between viewscapes and home locations in a rapidly exurbanizing region
COMPUTERS ENVIRONMENT AND URBAN SYSTEMS, 78.
author keywords: Land change; Viewshed; Visual quality; Exurbanization; Residential development; Open-source GIS
TL;DR:
The extent to which viewscapes - the visible part of a landscape that creates connection between people and their surroundings - drive patterns of development in the Sonoita Plain of Arizona is examined to more comprehensively consider the roles that viewscape play in landscape change.
(via Semantic Scholar)
UN Sustainable Development Goal Categories
2. Zero Hunger
(Web of Science)
11. Sustainable Cities and Communities
(OpenAlex)
Source: Web Of Science
Added: October 21, 2019
Low-density exurban development represents a unique form of landscape change motivated by aesthetics and individual choice, whether driven by perceptions of beauty or more broadly as worldviews expressed through outward appearance and actions. However, little is known about how individual preferences for new home sites manifest in landscape patterns of exurbanization. In this study, we examine the extent to which viewscapes - the visible part of a landscape that creates connection between people and their surroundings - drive patterns of development in the Sonoita Plain of Arizona. We mapped the locations of over 2,000 homes built before and after the Great Recession (~2010) and calculated line-of-sight viewscapes of each home with four metrics: viewscape area, privacy (number of visible neighbors), greenness (NDVI), and terrain ruggedness. We found that exurban homes have significantly larger and more private viewscapes compared to suburban homes and what would be expected by chance. After 2010, exurban homes were built at locations with yet larger and more private viewscapes even as settlement density increased. An autologistic model of post-2010 settlement patterns showed that viewscape privacy is positively associated with the probability of exurban development after accounting for road proximity and the area and greenness of viewscapes. Application of the predictive model was made possible through a new open-source algorithm that computes spatially continuous, all-possible vantage points (1.3M). Our algorithm allows planners to visualize wall-to-wall spatial patterns of viewscape drivers across a large region and more comprehensively consider the roles that viewscapes play in landscape change.