TEMPORAL QUALITIES OF PLACE: EXPLORING USER EXPERIENCES IN AN URBAN PARK IN ANKARA

Date

2025-11-14

Author

Özmen, Mehmet Akif

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This thesis investigates how the temporal qualities of place and sensorial conditions shape the aesthetic experience of an urban park, advancing the concept of felt time as an integral dimension of urban design. The study is based on 126 participant-led walk-along interviews in Kuğulu Park, Ankara, conducted across daily, weekly, and seasonal cycles. Participants chose their own routes and described their sensory, emotional, social, and spatial experiences in situ, producing approximately 9,400 statements. Through qualitative content analysis, these statements were organised into “codes” – recurrent units of meaning that capture specific affective or sensorial qualities of experience. From these, 98 major codes were identified, encompassing 8,470 responses. The codes were further grouped into 11 analytical categories and two overarching themes: Desire to Stay and Desire to Leave. Temporal experience was not solicited directly during the walks. Instead, at the end of each interview, participants were asked to estimate the duration of the walk, and these estimates were compared with the actual recorded clock time. The deviation between estimated and actual duration, interpreted alongside the experiential composition of each interview and the spatial–temporal distribution of codes across 42 micro-spaces and 18 temporal conditions, provided the basis for inferring how particular constellations of sensory, emotional, social, and spatial factors tend to compress or dilate subjective duration. The findings demonstrate that temporal qualities do not affect all areas equally: some sub-spaces consistently evoke specific experiential categories and are associated with compressed felt time, while others function as drag zones or fluctuate with daily, weekly, and seasonal rhythms. This pattern reveals both spatially and temporally fluid dimensions of experience and shows how certain place temporal conditions cultivate lightness and immersion, whereas others generate effort, or temporal drag that underpin attachment, engagement, or withdrawal. By linking phenomenology, time perception research, environmental psychology, and environmental aesthetics, the thesis provides a new framework for evaluating the temporal performance of urban places. The contribution is threefold: it elaborates the concept of felt time within an urban context through a systematic perspective; develops a methodological framework that links affective responses to micro-spatial and temporal contexts using interview-level duration deviation; and provides an evidence-based framework for the development of a temporal urban design practice. In doing so, the research demonstrates why some environments encourage lingering and attachment, while others produce discomfort, impatience, or temporal drag, thereby advancing both the theory and practice of temporal urban design.

Subject Keywords

Place-Temporality, Felt Time, Place Experience, Temporal Urban Design, Environmental Aesthetics

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/118305

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis