Encoding experience: Quantifying multisensory perception of urban form through a systematic review

Abstract

As cities become increasingly measurable and modeled, a new design paradigm is emerging — one that places human perception, emotion, and sensory experience at the center of urban analysis. Yet most planning frameworks and computational models continue to emphasize visual and spatial configuration alone, leaving out the full spectrum of how people engage with and feel in the built environment. This paper addresses that gap by systematically mapping how five sensory modalities — sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste — relate to urban form. A key innovation lies in reinterpreting Lynch’s seminal taxonomy of urban elements as a scaffold for organizing and analyzing multisensory perception. We synthesize findings across disciplines and identify sensing technologies capable of capturing the submodalities of each sensory domain, enabling a more complete understanding of how the built environment is experienced. While walkability serves as a representative domain throughout, the insights extend to broader efforts in urban design, infrastructure management, and experience-driven planning. By linking subjective human experience to objective spatial features, this work lays the foundation for new computational tools and humanistic metrics that can inform how cities are designed, maintained, and adapted.