Decoding Urban Déjà Vu: Developing a Visual Assessment Matrix for Urban Legibility

Book Chapter

2026

Published in: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-23463-6_9

Repetitive and standardized urban fabrics in multiple cities have produced indistinct spatial experiences, leading to perceptual confusion and weakened imageability. Such environments arise from planning paradigms that prioritize functional efficiency and regulatory uniformity over human perception and spatial identity, resulting in façades that appear interchangeable and spaces that evoke a sense of Urban Déjà Vu (a perceptual-cognitive state where distinct places evoke a similar visual familiarity).

This research develops and empirically validates the Visual Assessment Matrix (VAM), an integrative perceptual assessment framework that captures the circular relationship between visual, cognitive, and affective dimensions of urban experience. The framework operationalizes its variables into a Perceptual Clarity Index (PCI) with calibrated weighting factors, enabling a quantitative evaluation of perceptual coherence in contemporary urban environments.

Findings confirm that excessive visual repetition reduces imageability, intensifies cognitive disorientation, and weakens affective attachment, revealing a consistent causal chain: visual monotony → weak imageability → disorientation → detachment. The validated VAM exhibits high reliability and practical relevance as both a diagnostic and design-planning tool, allowing practitioners to identify perceptually fragile zones and to guide evidence-based interventions toward greater visual diversity, spatial legibility, and emotional coherence.

Ultimately, the study bridges perceptual theory and design praxis, reframing urban identity not as aesthetic uniformity but as a measurable condition of perceptual clarity and human-centered spatial well-being.