The Study of Spatial Quality

It is increasingly obvious that environmental perception is extraordinarily complex. The features of the environment which are seen as important, the way they all combine into the perceived environment, and the way the quality of this perceived environment is evaluated are not only complex but variable--although this variability is lawful and shows regularities. The man-environment interaction is thus crucially linked by perception and cognition and this, in turn, is affected by culture. In this essay I will examine one aspect of the environment and quality. Since this is merely one aspect of the study of environmental quality of what is meant by a good environment and how we evaluate it the study of quality should be simpler than the study of environmental quality. Yet it is still a subject of surprising complexity. I will, therefore, examine the variety of meanings which can attach to concepts such as space and spatial quality, and then briefly discuss some dimensions of the study of this topic.