Visual Hegemony in Professional Judgment: A Qualitative Delphi Study on Pedestrian Street Qualaality

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Department of Architecture, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Design, Shahid Rajaee Teacher Training University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

In many pedestrianization projects, particularly in Iranian cities, a structural gap is persistently reproduced
between the quality envisioned during the design process and the quality realized through users lived experiences.
This article argues that such a gap cannot be adequately explained by technical deficiencies, implementation failures, or
the absence of design indicators alone, but must be theorized at a deeper level, within the epistemological logic of
professional judgment through which spatial quality is identified, prioritized, and legitimized. Adopting a qualitative
exploratory–explanatory research design, the study examines how urban design experts judge “pedestrian street quality”
and which implicit evaluative patterns structure these judgments. To this end, a three-round Qualitative Delphi method
was conducted with fourteen architecture and urban design experts, intentionally designed not to achieve consensus but
to elicit tacit, taken-for-granted assumptions underlying professional judgment. Data were analyzed using thematic
analysis and directed content analysis to trace the stabilization of dominant judgment patterns across Delphi rounds. The
findings reveal that prevailing professional judgment, shaped by academic training and dominant design discourses, is
characterized by a “professional gaze” structured through visual hegemony, whereby spatial quality is largely reduced
to physical-formal and visually oriented criteria. This evaluative logic stands in fundamental tension with users’
experience of space as embodied, multisensory, and temporally situated. Rather than offering empirical generalizations,
this article advances a theoretically transferable interpretation of the quality gap, reframing it as a cognitive and
epistemological tension embedded within professional judgment, with important implications for urban design evaluation
and professional educationo.

Keywords

Main Subjects

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Journal of Design Thinking
Volume 6, Issue 1
June 2025
Pages 179-191

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