The spatial configuration of local climate zones reveals effects on wayfinding in human walking

5. Conclusion To enable the formulation of spatial reconfigurations strategies for improving wayfinding, our study provides empirical results demonstrating wayfinding performance using an intelligibility indicator, quantifies the spatial configurations of LCZ types using landscape metrics, and investigates their associations quantitively. Our study is novel in that it is the first study, to our knowledge, that applies LCZ classification to an intelligibility-based wayfinding methodology in the field of spatial planning. Another contribution of this research is the empirical evidence for suggesting strategies for future spatial reconfigurations, based on the statistical relation- ships between intelligibility values and multi-level landscape metrics of urban form. The main results show, firstly, the overall poor wayfinding performance in the whole region with the particularly low intelligibility values in more central cities, in which, people have greater difficulty in orienting themselves and finding their ways within complex urban spaces, because of the incoherent local and urban spatial configurations. Secondly, the correlations between landscape metrics of LCZ types and intelligibility-based wayfinding are statistically significant. This correlation analysis provides empirical evidence for spatial reconfiguration strategies for future urban and regional planning. In general, we claim that dispersed compact built-up areas and agglomerated non-high-rise built-up areas are desired in the region. Specifi-

cally, we suggest 1) increasing the distance between LCZ 1 (compact high-rise) and LCZ 2 (compact mid-rise) for their more dispersed distribution; and 2) agglomerating LCZ 3 (com- pact low-rise), LCZ 5 (open mid-rise), LCZ 6 (open low-rise), and LCZ 9 (sparsely built) for their more clustered distributions. In addition, Guangzhou, Dongguan, and Hong Kong, and particularly Zhongshan are defined as the priority locations for spatial reconfigurations based on the spatial clusters of landscape metrics. Although the accuracy of LCZ classification in characterizing urban form needs to be improved further, the various intelligibility-based wayfinding in different cities has been explained by the spatial analyses of urban forms. We show not only the development of spe- cific strategies for configurational changes in the region corresponding to diverse LCZ types but also the identification of priority locations for spatial reconfiguration implementation. Understanding wayfinding as a social issue from the perspective of physical spatial configu- rations contributes to developing human-centered urban and regional spaces, through the synchronous local and urban spatial configurations for co-development at local, city, and region levels. Supporting information S1 File. Zhongshan city is defined as a priority location for spatial reconfiguration in this study. Its spatial distributions of LCZ types are shown at S1 Fig. (DOCX) Author Contributions Conceptualization: Ping Yu Fan. Data curation: Ping Yu Fan. Formal analysis: Ping Yu Fan. Methodology: Ping Yu Fan. Software: Ping Yu Fan.

Supervision: Kwok Pan Chun. PLOS ONE The spatial configuration for wayfinding PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0289780 September 8, 2023 15 / 18