Abstract
The purpose of this study was to find common characteristics in everyday landscape cognition that the residents share and to restore the resulting characteristics through citizen-participatory town design. Through the residents participatory workshop supported by the Gwangju Buk-gu District Autonomy and Citizen Academy of Gwangju YMCA, 304 people from eight administrative districts participated in three programs. In each program, photographed landscape images representing everyday conditions of the townscape were presented in several ways: in program 1, the residents' mental map was studied; in program 2, landscape images of real places were matched to locations on a map; and in program 3, the landscapes were scored on a scale from 1 to 5 according to five descriptive categories. The elements that were recognized as common landscape features were public facilities, pedestrian spaces, school areas, and parks and natural green spaces. Additional results including recognition of the participants affection for the village and a common landscape image shared by the people, as inhabitants looked around at the space of their own lives. It seems possible that more creative townscapes can be created by residents through participatory programs.