A Landscape Study of Sichuan University (Wangjiang Campus) from the Perspective of Campus Tourism

Abstract

University campus tourism is an important component and extension of urban tourism. The campus landscapes at universities act as major reflections of the interaction between regional natural and humanistic environments and initiate a strong visual perception or sensory feelings of the campus, which play a positive guiding role in campus tourism resource development. In order to better understand the role of landscapes in campus tourism, the Wangjiang Campus of Sichuan University was selected as the study area. Campus landscapes under the comprehensive influence of natural and humanistic environments were studied based on three different multi-level (scale) perspectives including: (i) point scale, (ii) line scale and (iii) plane scale, as well as different research themes comprising: (i) landscapes of buildings and vegetation, (ii) color landscapes, (iii) landscapes of campus space utilization, and (iv) thermal landscapes. The results show that the Wangjiang Campus landscapes have strong environmental natural landscape components linked with strong humanistic landscapes, which may provide lively, positive and relaxed visual feelings to tourists in the form of affirmative landscape services. The formation and development of the campus landscapes are affected by the geographic environments and campus culture, and it is conducive to the formation of unique campus genius loci. Nowadays, the landscapes of Wangjiang Campus have become a distinctive visiting card of campus tourism. This study would be helpful in better understating of the campus landscapes using new perspectives, as well as could be used as references for the development of university-campus-tourism.