Image-Building and Place Perception of the Subway Station’s Cultural Landscape: A Case Study in Xi’an, China

In the new phase of urbanization in China, the collective cultural landscapes of subway stations in many metropolises are flourishing, providing a powerful way to coordinate urban cultural development and display the image and identity of the city. This study focuses on the image-building cultural landscapes of subway stations. In the theoretical analysis section, it clarifies the construction logic with supporting theory, highlighting the key concepts involved: environmental design, cultural image perception and place perception, and setting out a structural framework of hypotheses concerning the relationships between these three concepts. In the empirical section, six stations in the urban historical center of Xi’an city were selected as the objects, and evaluation indexes of the three variables based on the perspective of the individual were constructed. Using a questionnaire and a combination of factor analysis and structural equation modeling methods, the data from 480 samples were then analyzed. The results were as follows: the cultural image and place perception presented by the environmental design of subway stations are universal to different categories of people; the structural model results showed that environmental design positively affects cultural image perception and place perception; the mediating effect results showed that environmental design affects place perception through cultural image perception. The empirical results confirmed the necessity and rationality of building the image of the cultural landscape of subway stations. Finally, the study makes suggestions for the optimization of current subway landscape development practices. The contribution of this study lies in the construction of a vertical analysis framework from “encoding: construction” to “decoding: perception”, which could provide a reference for the integration of theory and practice for the cultural landscapes of subway stations in Chinese metropolises. However, the innovative definitions and methods used to examine some of the concepts also have a certain subjectivity and therefore require further evidence-based investigation.