Townscape assessment: the development of a practical tool for monitoring and assessing visual quality in the built environment

Abstract

‘Townscape’ as an approach to understanding one aspect of quality in the built environment has had mixed fortunes over the last few decades. Nonetheless, it remains a useful category within which the question of how places work at an aesthetic level can be considered. The problem has been, however, the absence of a comprehensive and relatively objective system for recording and representing the findings from townscape evaluation in the field. This paper presents the evolution of one such approach, and illustrates how it has been applied as part of a more general impact assessment research project to determine the effectiveness of the Townscape Heritage Initiative (THI) regeneration programme in the UK. The paper concludes with a discussion of the utility of the method for future built environment monitoring and evaluation programmes.