Urban Visual Pollution: Assessment, Practices and Management Framework in Rawalpindi, Pakistan

Abstract

The concept of visual pollution attained recognition in the middle of the 19th century and was declared as toxic as other forms of pollution like air, water, land. The sources of visual pollution are declared subjectively dependent on the culture, place character, location and size. Dumps of solid wastes, outdoor advertisements, hanging communication wires, broken roads, architecturally flawed buildings, wall chalking, and graffiti are some of those sources. Scholars started discussions in print media by introducing the slogans like “litter on a stick8”. The first lady of the United States of America, Lady Bird Johnson, in the 1960s pioneered actions against visual pollution on roadways. The highway beautification act 1965 was enacted as a result of her efforts. With the increasing focus on the quality of life, the phenomenon of urban visual pollution has been progressively gaining attention from researchers and policymakers, especially in the developed world. However, the subjectivity and complexity of assessing visual pollution in urban settings remain a challenge, especially given the lack of robust and reliable methods for quantifying visual pollution even in the developed part of the world. First, there is a knowledge gap in conceptualising and quantifying visual pollution against several pollutants on a scale at any desired location. It demands the exploration of visual pollution and generates the need to develop a quantitative methodology for assessing visual pollution in urban areas. Second, it also requires applying any such tool in some case study areas to showcase the spread of visual pollution on defined thresholds. Third, different sources of visual pollution are dealt with by various departments in developing countries. Finally, the lack of content and extent of legal documents and combined enforcement strategies urge the need to formulate a comprehensive legislative and implementation framework for visual pollution in the light of best practices adopted from developed countries. The research design employed mixed methodologies and analysis, including systematic scoping review of literature, public survey, photo competition, field observations, variability sampling, AHP with Experts Panel (n=20), Inter-Rater Reliability, selection and spatial sampling of the sampled points for the case study area and content analysis of the regulatory documents in Punjab. The research explores the evolution and context of the concept of visual pollution and its sources by applying these methods. Visual pollution sources are termed as ‘Visual Pollution Objects’ and tagged with formal definitions. The research also presents a novel systematic approach for developing a robust Visual Pollution Assessment (VPA) tool to quantify visual pollution at any point of interest. It is the combination of a VPA scorecard and the VPA calculator. A vital feature of the VPA tool methodology is explicit and systematic incorporation of expert and public opinion for listing (39) and ranking visual pollution Objects (VPOs). Moreover, it deploys established empirical complex decision-making techniques to address the challenge of subjectivity in weighting the impact of individual VPOs. The resultant VPA tool uses close-ended options to capture the presence and characteristics of various VPOs on a given node. Based on these inputs, it calculates a point-based visual pollution scorecard for the observation point, further inserted in the VPA calculator to bring the accumulative score of visual pollution at a scale of 1-100. The performance of the VPA tool has been extensively tested and verified at various locations in Pakistan. However, considering the challenges associated with using the paper-based tool for VPA (which include the inability to handle various data types such as text, numeric, geolocation, images, etc.), a mobile-based tool has been designed. It is a spatial decision support system comprising a combination of open-source tools to collect, store, and present VPA data for any urban space of any scale. The system employs the Open Data Kit (ODK) to build its mobile-based VPA tool, collecting VPO attributes using any Android device. The collected data was streamed to the web-based data management and visualisation modules of the system in real-time built upon ODK Aggregate and PostgreSQL, OpenGeo Suite, and PHP, respectively. Further, the Visual Pollution Assessment tool's application has been used to assess visual pollution and its relationship with urban phenomena of landuses, controlling bodies, socio-economic classes, and development in the urban area of case study Rawalpindi is the fourth largest city of Pakistan. The sample strata obtained by stratified sampling was of a minimum of 30 for each subcategory. Similarly, spatial sampling was used to select sampled nodes in the case study area, and the field data was collected for 303 points using the Visual Pollution Assessment tool. The spatial assessment and mapping of the case study Rawalpindi urban area conclude that visual pollution is less in planned, residential areas with a high socio-economic group under private administration. Finally, the research suggests a five-step framework for the control and management of visual pollution, which encompasses and demands to enhance knowledge building regarding VP, awareness-raising of practitioners both in academia and administrative bodies about it, legal support and amendments in Environmental laws and policies, assessment of visual pollution in urban areas using Visual Pollution Assessment (VPA) tool and demarcation of action and subject areas of visual pollution. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first research that introduces a novel Visual Pollution Assessment tool in terms of quantitative robustness and broad coverage of Visual Pollution Objects. The VPA tool will help regulators assess and chart visual pollution consistently and objectively, following the regulatory framework suggested as a research output. It can help policymakers provide an empirical basis for gathering evidence, facilitating evidence-based and evidence-driven policy strategies, which are likely to have a significant impact, especially in developing countries.