Author(s)

A. Tsouchlaraki & G. Achilleos

Abstract

The environment that we perceive, record and analyze as "urban landscape" is the most complex of all landscapes, due to the multiple interactions between its built components and the dynamic social, economical and cultural standards of the society. Each urban landscape has its own history. Visual resource analysis can contribute to the management of urban environments by assisting in decision making or actions, such as determining which geographic areas are suitable for urbanization or deciding what to keep or what to develop at the district or neighborhood level because of its inherent or associated visual quality. There are many elements that can be recorded for an integrated analysis of the urban environment. In this paper, emphasis is given to those elements, methods and techniques that describe, analyze and evaluate the visual elements of a city. An application of visual element inventory and analysis in the Zografos area is presented and these data are entered into a spatial database, within a visual environmental Geographical Information System. Furthermore, the common problems of the Greek urban landscape are briefly discussed in this paper. Keywords: urban landscape, visual elements, spatial database, GIS. 1 Introduction The environment, as it is perceived, registered and analysed in terms of \“urban landscape” is the most complicated system among those that are considered to be environmentally available. The complexity of the urban environment lies in the multiple interactions of its constituent elements.

Keywords

urban landscape, visual elements, spatial database, GIS.