Planners and designers are interested in understanding place cognition, meaning how does one know where they are in the environment? For example this occurs upon arrival at a train station, where the visitor has never been to that specific train stop before. In this study, the recognition of place is studied for a train station in East Lansing, Michigan. In this investigation, five design treatments (k=5) for the East the Lansing Train Station are explored. Twelve pictures for each treatment (b=12) were developed from the windows of the train looking into the train station. Forty five respondents separated the pictures into groups associated with the cognition of the place. Through Friedman's Two-Way Analysis of Variance, the results indicated that at least one treatment was different than another treatment (p≤0.005). The Friedman's Multiple Comparison test revealed that all of the treatments were significantly difference from each other (p<0.05). Treatments with strong symbolism associated with place were more readily identified with a specific setting, the East Lansing Train Station. Key words: landscape architecture, environmental psychology, environmental design, urban design, transportation planning
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