Looking across the layers, revealing beauty?
On completing the layers of analysis, a final stage brings the range or findings together to make sense of the range of data and what it means.
A final stage of the analysis involves compiling the visual preferences expressed by respondents across the layers and interpreting them through the lens of the visual and non-visual priorities expressed by participants. This might best be done in a table of ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ shown against the full range of issues investigated in Layers 1 to 5 of the Layered VPM. To be included, views should be ‘widely supported’ but not necessarily supported by a majority. Alternative visual preference paths favoured by substantial minorities should also be included.
The twelve preferences articulated in Section 03 of this guide and summarised in the grid, were the result of this process as reported in Urban Beauty, knowing the unknowable. Conducted locally, a Layered VPM will likely reveal more nuanced detail regarding how preferences relate to specific local contexts.
The Layered VPM reported in Urban Beauty, knowing the unknowable, and used to illustrate this guide, revealed that the absence of visual stimuli in Layer 1 resulted in all design considerations being rated as important, but that well-being, social, and sustainability needs were prioritised over visual ones. When, however, visual stimuli were introduced, judgments made about all these factors became heavily shaped by the aesthetic qualities of places. This is because observers do not simply look at images, they interpret them and draw conclusions about the environments depicted, such as their usability or level of upkeep.
As a result, preferences formed from images are never purely visual or value neutral. Instead, they reflect a web of trade-offs: between what is actually seen and what viewers prefer, and between what is seen and the wider concerns or responsibilities that must be balanced by those doing the viewing.
Across the different layers of analysis, it was possible to identify very significant variations in participant responses given the heterogeneous nature of individual tastes, with individuals favouring a wide range of building forms, styles, and layouts. At the same time, broad commonalities in the visual preferences of the various participant groups were also obvious and became more apparent when triangulated across the different methodological layers.
What that says about beauty and how we should interpret it is challenging. In the research there was a clear tendency to avoid labelling projects as ‘beautiful’ or (to a lesser degree) ‘ugly’ and instead to coalesce around less emotive assessments. This reflects:
• First, that consensus tends to be strongest when evaluations of attractiveness are negative and weaker when they are positive.
• Second, that securing urban beauty remains a high bar against which to measure the quality of new development projects, particularly when evaluations are done before projects have had time to mature and gain time-thickened qualities.
Despite this, a Layered VPM can facilitate local learning, leading to the measurement and articulation of aesthetic preferences in a manner that allows projects to be understood retrospectively and, more importantly, prospectively in relation to each other and their overall actual and potential attractiveness.