Representing the Human-Environment Relationship: Digital Tools for Supporting Decision-Making Processes in Urban Regeneration Initiatives

Understanding people's perception of the urban environment is deemed fundamental for the successful implementation of sustainable Urban Regeneration (UR) initiatives. Nevertheless, such information is still rarely integrated in the traditional process of UR design and planning. The study described here aims to address this issue and is framed within a wider research project aimed at developing digital solutions to support UR decision-making processes. First, the article provides a critical review of existing emotion-mapping studies. Results from this analysis reveal that most of these projects are constrained to limited data types and rely on static, abstract visualizations, which may limit stakeholders' ability to effectively interpret the data. The article follows by presenting the initial insights and design guidelines derived from a Research-through-Design study aimed at identifying alternative visualization methods to represent heterogeneous urban perception data. Findings are briefly discussed along with limitations and future work.