Identifying City Image Through Streetscape Visual Features and Visitor Narratives: A Case Study in Wuhan
Peian Yao, Xiaoxu Wei, Shu Zhu, Yangyang YuanCity image links perceptions of urban form and environmental quality to place identity and sociocultural sustainability. However, city-scale research rarely integrates visible streetscape characteristics with visitor narratives. Using Wuhan, China, as a case study, this study integrates panoramic streetscape imagery with online visitor reviews. Semantic segmentation was employed to quantify nine streetscape visual indicators, such as building interfaces, visible greenery and water, color characteristics, and visual disturbances. High-frequency term extraction and thematic coding identified four dimensions of visitor perception: cultural, aesthetic, leisure, and scientific–educational perceptions. Statistical and spatial analyses were subsequently conducted to examine the relationships between the visual indicators and these perceptual dimensions. Leisure and aesthetic perceptions emerged as the most prominent dimensions. Color harmony, water visibility, and visible greenery were positively associated with cultural, aesthetic, and leisure perceptions. Dense building interfaces and visual disturbances were negatively associated with aesthetic and leisure perceptions but positively associated with scientific–educational perception. Hotspots of cultural, aesthetic, and leisure narrative intensity were concentrated in core Wuchang and the East Lake area, whereas scientific–educational perception showed weaker overall spatial clustering, with localized hotspots in central urban areas. These findings suggest that integrating street-view imagery with visitor narratives can help identify spatially differentiated relationships between visible urban environments and city image. The proposed framework may facilitate the identification of sustainability-relevant visual resources and provide diagnostic evidence that may inform urban design and public-space management.