The Relation between Green Visual Index and Visual Comfort in Qingdao Coastal Streets

The public's mental health is obviously impacted by the perception of green quantity in urban streets. As one of the important urban spatial indicators, the Green View Index (GVI) reflects the green quantity of streets, which is helpful in revealing the level of street vegetation from the perspective of pedestrians. The GVI can improve the attraction and the visual experience in urban streets. Taking Qingdao Coastal Streets as an example, the study used OpenStreetMap, Baidu Street View (BSV) image, DeepLabV3+ semantic segmentation, and the SD method to obtain the GVI and Visual Comfort (VICO), and the correlation and influence mechanisms were discussed. The result showed that the greening landscape of the overall Qingdao Coastal Streets was of high quality, and the historic district was the most outstanding. The greening quality was a little low in the transitional district and the western modern district, which should be improved. In addition, the relationship between GVI and VICO showed a strong positive correlation. The spatial distribution of the VICO was more consistent with the GVI. The street VICO was affected by the GVI, plant richness, the street scale, and landscape diversity. Moreover, with the increase of the GVI, the increase trend of the VICO instead gradually decreased. The contribution of this study was not only accurately diagnosing the problems of street greening quality, shedding light on the relationship between GVI and VICO, but also providing theoretical support for urban greening planning and management, especially for healthy street design.

Automated summary

The perception of green quantity in urban streets has a clear impact on the public's mental health. The Green View Index (GVI), as an important urban spatial indicator, reflects the quantity of green spaces in streets and helps to reveal the level of street vegetation from pedestrians' perspective. The study in Qingdao Coastal Streets used various methods to obtain GVI and Visual Comfort (VICO) and discussed their correlation and influence mechanisms. The findings showed that the overall greening landscape of Qingdao Coastal Streets was of high quality, with the historic district being the most outstanding. The study also revealed a strong positive correlation between GVI and VICO.