Is there any difference between the owners and the public in their visual impact assessments?--A case study of the front garden of multi-storey residential buildings.

As a special garden unique to China, the front garden of multi-storey residential buildings has certain public attributes but is managed by a single owner. In this study, the front gardens of multi-storey residential buildings in Jiangsu province, China, were set as research object. Meanwhile, the size of garden, plant type, plant vertical structure, color number, plant coverage, and fence material were chosen as the landscape features to be explored. Then the experiments were conducted to reveal the visual impact assessment rendered by the public with different demographic attributes and the results obtained were analyzed. As is indicated by the statistical analysis, significant differences exist between the owners and the public in their visual impact assessments of the front gardens; the six landscape features are the main factors that influence the public's visual impact assessment; and the public with different demographic attributes would render different visual impact assessments of front gardens. This study offers valuable help for the design of front gardens of multi-storey residential buildings.