Environmental and social sustainability automated evaluation of plazas based on 3D visibility measurements

The purpose of this paper is to present an innovative method for measuring and evaluating 3D visibility indicators to design sustainable urban plazas. Sustainable urban plazas are studied in five physical, social, semantic, spatial, and ecological dimensions. Based on the literature review, automated 3D geometrical evaluation calculated by five normalized properties taken from a 3D space of Plaza included: Isovist, Smallness, Compactness, Enclosure, and Regularity. Human subjective evaluations are tested in 20 worldwide plazas. The research was conducted through survey methods and MATLAB software analysis, image processing, algorithm finding, machine learning, and inferential statics. Accordingly, the question was answered: how does the citizens’ mental evaluation change based on the squares’ three-dimensional characteristics? Findings show a significant relationship between people’s evaluation of the plazas and the three-dimensional geometric evaluations. The research results showed that three-dimensional geometric evaluations are a more accurate and complete method for recognizing high-quality plazas. Also, five normalized properties could explain 0.67% of the place quality and sustainability. Comparing this study’s findings with two-dimensional research shows a significant difference in evaluating the quality of two-dimensional and three-dimensional fields.