The identification of cultural genes in historic districts and their influences on cultural perception—case study in Central Street in Harbin, China

Cultural genes in historic districts are an important carrier of, and the main way in which people perceive, urban cultural heritage. In this study, the relationship between cultural perception and cultural genes is first established. Taking Central Street in Harbin, China, as an example, a cultural gene identification system was established to quantitatively identify the cultural genes in the space, and the cultural perception of each street was evaluated via a questionnaire survey. The correlations between cultural genes and cultural perception were obtained via correlation analysis, and the cultural gene elements that have significant impacts on cultural perception were screened based on the fitting degree of the model. Moreover, the differences in the influence intensities were compared according to the standardization coefficient. The statistical results show that cultural locational genes, street form genes, street traffic genes, street architecture genes, featured activity genes, street landscape genes, and street node genes are significantly correlated with cultural perception. Among them, seven indicators are positively correlated with cultural perception, and one indicator is negatively correlated with cultural perception. The impact of historical building interface ratio, Sense of historical architectural sequence, and hard landscape richness on cultural perception is relatively strong. The research in this paper provides a new perspective on the study of historic districts from the perspective of cultural perception, and the results of the research can provide a basis for designers and decision makers in the regeneration of historic districts.