# Exploring Virtual Environments to Assess the Quality of Public Spaces
## 2 Literature Review
### Related Works
[7] proposed an interdisciplinary mixed-methods approach to analyze urban spaces, focusing on walkability and bikeability. The study emphasizes the importance of understanding people's perceptions and reactions to their environments, considering factors such as traffic volume, noise, safety, urban configuration, and greenness. The methodology involves using objective data from wearable physiological sensors, an e-diary app, first-person perspective videos from a chest-mounted camera, referenced interviews, and post-hoc surveys. The approach focuses on identifying and geolocating moments of stress and relaxation for pedestrians and cyclists in city centers. [PERSON] et al. [8] addresses the challenging dimension of street design/landscape in walkability assessment. The book categorizes features into imaginability, visual enclosure, human scale, transparency, and complexity. [PERSON] et al. 's research evaluates the impact of street landscape on walkability compared to other dimensions, including diversity, density, destination accessibility, distance to transit, and demography. Others study some aspects at a smaller scale within neighborhoods, employing various assessment tools to understand how neighborhood characteristics influence people's perceptions of walkability in empirical studies [9]. Existing tools for auditing public spaces often require time-consuming onsite field-work, surveys, focus groups, and document analysis, making them labor-intensive. The use of images has become a common and cost-effective approach to assess the aesthetic qualities of built environments. Compared to traditional methods, VR environments offer more dynamic and integral impressions, allowing respondents to perceive walkability dynamically with a sense of realism and experience [10]. [PERSON] et al. [11] opted to gauge users' perceptions of walkability through recorded videos simulating neighborhood environments at the pedestrian's eye level. [PERSON] et al. [12] also used recorded videos of the virtual environment created under two scenarios, the current situation and the future situation after the redevelopment of a sidewalk, in order to assess possible improvements in walkability and bikeability. An advantage of this approach is that participants can gain an integrated view of the environment from the comfort of their homes, as videos do not require the complex setup necessary for a head-mounted display. The chosen scale for measurement is a street block, deemed an appropriate unit for mapping urban structures [13]. [PERSON] et al. [14] explored the acceptability of virtual reality assessment for walking in a virtual environment, particularly for pre-occupancy urban designs impacting walking. The study employed a wearable VR head-mounted display with a backpack computer, allowing young adults (\(n=40\)) to freely walk through a large indoor gymnasium while virtually navigating a model of a modifiable urban streetscape. Participants strolled through a modifiable VR model of four city blocks in the historic downtown area of a mid-sized city in the western US at their chosen speed. Following the VR session, participants completed a survey covering VR adjustment, cybersickness, virtual realism, equipment comfort, controller usability, immersion, perceived safety, environment attractiveness, and perceived task difficulty. [PERSON] et al. [15] investigated the utilization of electrodermal activity wristband sensors with an HMD to measure skin conductance level and correlate it with specific urban planning scenarios, including trucks passing by, traffic noise levels, and traffic density. The study involved a small sample of six participants in a virtual environment. The 360-degree video represents a relatively innovative technology for environmental observation, auditing, and modeling [16]. Previous studies, such as [17; 18], have employed recorded real environments in the form of 360\({}^{\circ}\) panoramic videos. Participants were guided through virtual tours using a head-mounted display.