Fractals, skylines, nature and beauty

One theory of skyline design proposes that skylines will look better if the fractal dimension of the skyline matches the fractal dimension of the surrounding landscape. This is the theory of contextual fractal fit. This theory was tested by creating scenes in which the fractal dimension of the skylines did or did not match the fractal dimension of mountains in the background. Preference data indicated that contextual fractal fit had a very small effect on preferences (standardized mean contrast=0.07). A second experiment tested the proposal that fractal structure had more influence on preference than did simple variation. This proposal was tested with two more sets of scenes. Both sets were created with identical variances in building features (heights, widths, depths, and setbacks), but one set had fractal structure and the other set did not. The scenes created without fractal structure were slightly preferred over the scenes with fractal structure (standardize mean contrast=0.138).