2025/12/02 by Milad Malekzadeh, Malekzadeh, Milad, Magdalena Biernacka +8
Environmental Science · #Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI) #Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV) #Computers and Society (cs.CY) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Land Use and Ecosystem Services #Urban Green Space and Health #Urban Heat Island Mitigation
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2512.11827
openalex publication_date 2025/12/02 · openalex created_date 2025/12/17 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Understanding greenspace attractiveness is essential for designing livable and inclusive urban environments, yet existing assessment approaches often overlook informal or transient spaces and remain too resource intensive to capture subjective perceptions at scale. This study examines the ability of multimodal large language models (MLLMs), ChatGPT GPT-4o, Claude 3.5 Haiku, and Gemini 2.0 Flash, to assess greenspace attractiveness similarly to humans using Google Street View imagery. We compared model outputs with responses from a geo-questionnaire of residents in Lodz, Poland, across both formal (for example, parks and managed greenspaces) and informal (for example, meadows and wastelands) greenspaces. Survey respondents and models indicated whether each greenspace was attractive or unattractive and provided up to three free text explanations. Analyses examined how often their attractiveness judgments aligned and compared their explanations after classifying them into shared reasoning categories. Results show high AI human agreement for attractive formal greenspaces and unattractive informal spaces, but low alignment for attractive informal and unattractive formal greenspaces. Models consistently emphasized aesthetic and design oriented features, underrepresenting safety, functional infrastructure, and locally embedded qualities valued by survey respondents. While these findings highlight the potential for scalable pre-assessment, they also underscore the need for human oversight and complementary participatory approaches. We conclude that MLLMs can support, but not replace, context sensitive greenspace evaluation in planning practice.