Page 40 - JCAU-6-3

Journal of Chinese

Architecture and Urbanism

ORIGINAL ARTICLE
A study on optimizing public spaces in rural

heritage tourist sites from spatial perception: The
case of Jinggang historic town

Miran He and Hongtao Liu*

Department of Architecture, Faculty of Architecture, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu,
Sichuan, China
(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Conservation and Utilization of Rural Heritage in the
Context of Rural Revitalization)

Abstract

The development of cultural and rural tourism has fostered the expansion of heritage
sites while concurrently presenting challenges such as resource wastage and cultural
degradation. Optimizing spatial use requires a comprehensive understanding of
the dynamics inherent to these sites. An emerging trend involves the integration of
human perception technology into spatial perception research. Thus, to examine the
correlation between alterations in physical and visual environments, tourists’ perceived
changes, and primary influencing elements in rural heritage tourism sites, Jinggang – a
historic and cultural town in Changsha, Hunan province, China – was selected as the
*Corresponding author: research site. A comprehensive interdisciplinary analysis was conducted by integrating
Hongtao Liu physical environment data from public spaces. These data include air temperature (T ),
a
(liuhongtao@swjtu.edu.cn) relative humidity (RH), wind speed (WS), equivalent sound pressure level (ESPL), visual
Citation: He, M. & Liu, H. (2024). environment data (including green view index [GVI], sky view index [SVI], road and
A study on optimizing public spaces pavement view index (R&PVI), and construction view index [CVI]), along with biosensing
in rural heritage tourist sites from data (level of stress [LS]) collected from tourists. The findings indicate the following:
spatial perception: The case of
Jinggang historic town. Journal of (i) the LS of the public space in Jinggang falls within the normal range but remains
Chinese Architecture and Urbanism, generally high, with the humanistic landscape, dominated by traditional architecture,
6(3), 2481. scoring higher than the natural landscape; (ii) regarding spatial perception, the quantity
https://doi.org/10.36922/jcau.2481
of physical environment elements influencing LS surpasses that of visual environment
Received: December 19, 2023 elements, and the most relevant indicators, including ESPL, R&PVI, and CVI, all contribute
Accepted: February 29, 2024 to tourists’ LS; and (iii) ESPL significantly influences LS within the environment domain,
where higher environmental noise decibels correspond to tourists’ increased LS. The
Published Online: May 23, 2024
study concludes that historic towns possess distinct characteristics as types of rural
Copyright: © 2024 Author(s). heritage tourism sites. This study provides valuable insights into enhancing spatial
This is an open-access article
distributed under the terms of the environmental quality and promoting an appealing and sustainable rural setting by
Creative Commons Attribution- implementing public space optimization strategies in rural heritage sites.
Non-Commercial 4.0 International
(CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits all
non-commercial use, distribution, Keywords: Spatial perception; Rural heritage tourism; Public space optimization
and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is
properly cited.
Publisher’s Note: AccScience
Publishing remains neutral with 1. Introduction
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional The Global Rural Landscapes Initiative, launched by the ICOMOS Cultural Landscapes
affiliations. Committee in 2011, aimed to establish a systematic approach guiding the preservation

Volume 6 Issue 3 (2024) 1 https://doi.org/10.36922/jcau.2481