Emotions and Places. An Investigation through Virtual Reality

The contribution proposes the results of a pilot application of the method (exp-EIA© 2020 and 2021) developed within the European projects H2020 EIT Digital (Digital Cities): "AR4CUP: Augmented Reality for Collaborative Urban Planning" (2019 and 2020). During these projects, we implemented an APP that favors participatory processes with citizens thanks to Virtual and Augmented Reality solutions to visualize and react to urban contexts in the current or designed condition. The method integrates experiential simulation with psychological constructs to represent the geography of experience in places. The case study presented in the paper was carried out at the neighborhood scale and investigates a particular target of users: university students in the Città Studi district in Milan, where Politecnico di Milano and the Università degli Studi di Milano are located. The results show, on average, a positive emotional experience, primarily linked to the symbolic places of the universities. The results provide an initial basis for a collective discussion on the relationship between people and the neighborhood. This study's outcomes contributed to developing the European projects and their final product, an innovative co-design app distributed as CitySense.