An insight into the urban smellscape: the transformation of traditional to contemporary urban place experience

ABSTRACT Sensescape, predominantly explored from the viewpoint of viewscape and soundscape, needs investigation from other senses such as smell, a vital part of place experience. The place experience not only depends on senses but also on how senses act within the context. Cities across developing countries, with dynamic tension of coexistence between traditional and modern, are experiencing transformations, inducing major alterations in urban land-use systems and have started to impact upon urban place experience and urban smellscapes diversities. Smellscape is a complex phenomenon posing challenges to the reductionist approach for better insight, hence requiring an effective conceptual framework for analyzing the smellscape with reference to the transformations in cities. Four urban node precinct typologies, as representative cases from developing countries, namely, traditional, partially transformed, transformed and majorly transformed urban nodes, are assessed and presented in this paper. The smellscape and urban place experience, their interconnectedness, and interdependency are investigated in this paper. Based on interpretive epistemology from the cognition framework, the paper posits that the smellscape has a vital role in urban place experience, it correlates and influences urban place liking, and provides clues for theory building for the assessment of smellscape, an underexplored intangible aspect of sensory place experience.


Introduction
The urban ambiances are shaped and embodied experienced as a result of diverse, at times distinctive, a fusion of seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, and smelling atmospheric characteristics (Thibaud 2011).Senses perform a vital role in shaping the peopleplace relationship, and this long-term relationship establishes identities and meanings to the physical environments that create a sense of place (Davidson and Milligan 2004).Sense of place expresses how people feel about the place, and level of sense of place varies depending on activities and meaning of place.The higher level of sense of place encourages the people interaction to connect with that place, and that is why the creation and conservation of sense of place is important in maintaining the quality of the place (Nijafi, Kamal, and Mohd Shariff 2011).The experiences of smells enrich our understanding of places and behavioral responses in places (Classen, Howes, and Synnott 1994).The smell plays different roles in place experience and leads to behavioral changes, such as therapeutic smells, natural smell affects the human behavior positively; on contrary, the smells such as smell from waste and traffic negatively affect the place experience and quality of life (Henshaw 2013;Xiao, Aletta, and Radicchi 2022).The focus on eradication and deodorization of smell in planning policies resulted in olfactory blandness of place, which often contributes to a loss of the sense of place (Meighan 2007), so the smell-sensitive urban planning is important for sustainable development.
Manzo explained that in the phenomenology of place experience is the most important element in perception (Manzo and Lynne 2005).However, places have different levels of sensory experiences as some places have a rich sensory experience which provides opportunities for social interactions and encourages people to stay a little longer.Predominantly in dense urban fabric with a variety of activities, the sensory experience allows people to remember the place in a distinctive way by contributing to place identity.It is evident in various researches that the senses are an important part of people's everyday experiences (Zardini 2006).
Sight and hearing are the remote senses, whereas the sense of smell, touch, and taste get activated by going closer.Our senses of smell, touch, and taste are closely connected to our emotions (Smith and Susan 2001).Visual memories are good for immediate recall, whereas the smell impression remains longer in the memory, thus playing an important role in the place experience (Herz and Engen 1996).Smell contributes to the socio-cultural characteristics of communities and places by adding distinctive impressions.Smell offers an identity to a place that not only becomes part of our experience but also guides the behavior within that place.The daily association with the smell enriches our sensory experience.However, deprivation of smell makes places placeless that is culturally unknown environments which are similar anywhere (Relph 2016).Smells are unavoidable in people's routine life in cities, varyingly sourced and around us; there is an invisible world (Rodaway 1994).The literature on the urban sensory environment reported the smell from the point of view of its air quality, referring to its negative aspects as nuisance odour and proposals for its control (Degen 2014); however, very little research is reported on the positive aspects of smell.The study of smellscape in an urban context is significantly connected with health and wellbeing (Spence 2020; Gorman 2017) and is the most complex in nature (Henshaw 2013), yet the complete sensorial range is absent from urban studies.
The viewscape is always used as a major design consideration; however, the pioneer sensory scholar Pallasmaa stated that every experience of the environment is multisensory (Pallasmaa 2005).The concept of smellscape is first put forward by Porteous (1985).He investigated the experience of a place through smell and showed the importance of smellscape.In further research, the "olfactory geography" is the term used by Rodaway (1994) to demonstrate the connection between smell, smell sources, people, and place on a regional scale.In recent years, Henshaw used the term smellscape to describe the smell environment of a precinct in totality.She suggested that the smellscape investigation can be implemented on three different levels like micro, mid, and macro by focusing on people's experience through smellwalk (Henshaw 2013).The research by Obrist analyzed the participants smell stories and summarized it into 10 categories of people's associations of smells in everyday life, which helps in creating reference for designers to create pleasant smell experiences (Obrist, Nicolas Tuch, and Hornbaek 2014).Smell can arouse strong emotions and carry various meaning associated with people and place.While exploring the smellscape and its theoretical background, research by Jeiling Xiao examines perceptual process of smellscape through case study of intramodal transit space.The study helped in understanding the relationship of people and their emotional response triggered by smell in physical setting along with subjectivities (Xiao, Tait, and Kang 2020).The further detailed study focuses on pleasantness as the perceptual quality of smellscape and provides a perceptual model for smellscape pleasantness with nine pleasantness indicators (Xiao, Tait, and Kang 2018).Researcher Kate McLean used the method of smellwalk to generate the smellscape maps having a graphical representation of various aspects of smellscape (McLean 2013) (McLean 2020).The case study of Istanbul demonstrate how an embodied approach, which focuses on smell as intangible heritage that can serve as a catalyst for individuals and communities to access their memories, emotions, and values and increase the awareness of the role scent plays in defining locality (Davis and Thys-Şenocak 2017).The scent walks are conducted in Kastamonu city by Elif Ayan Ceven and Nur Belkayali to expose the significance of the smell in experience of place and its role in urban memory which finally emphasized the importance of smell for urban design and planning (Ayan Çeven and Belkayalı 2023).Monica Degen and Gillian Rose used the survey based empirical analysis with the help of walk and interviews in sensescape study and suggested that the sense of place highly depends on sensory experience.However, the experience is mediated by factors like bodily mobility and perceptual memories that affects the present experience of place by multiplying or dulling the sensory encounter (Montserrat Degen and Rose 2012).Daniele Quercia and fellow researcher examined the role of social media in mapping of urban smell environment.The study contributed in providing methodological tool for smellscape research and providing insight in how the city smells at macro-level which is important part of urban planning (Quercia et al. 2015).Researcher PerMsgnud Lindborg and Kongmeng Liew explored the smellscape imagination by comparative study of smellscape experience through onsite sensory walk ratings and virtual walk reproduced with audio-visual recording of the same place and measured the degree of association between real and imagined smellscapes (Lindborg and Liew 2021).The smellscape study of old city center of Guangzhou, China, analyses smellscape of place by smell tracking and social media data which helped in drawing smell maps.These maps areanalysed and tested through social media data and semantic analysis, resulted in inferring the impact of smell on neighborhoods environment and its key factors which helped in formulating strategies for planning with integration of smell, leading to the sustainable development of place (Gao et al. 2022).
The traditional historic urban precinct has a unique character that manifests certain qualities like a variety of functions, an interesting streetscape which results in a pleasant, lively, and safe experience of place (Nabil Felix and El-Daghar 2019).The last few decades of human history showed rapid urbanization with growing densities, resulting in a challenge to design, manage, and conserve traditional historic urban areas.Cities across developing countries, with dynamic tension of coexistence between traditional and modern, are experiencing transformations in economies, societies, climates, politics, technologies, and so forth.These transformations are inducing major alterations to urban land-use systems and have started to impact urban place experience (Mehanna and Abou 2019).Urban smellscape diversities are disappearing because of the use of sanitary chemicals, detergents, junk foods, and so on, but not to the extent of developed countries.Thus, the complex phenomenon of smellscape, besides the reductionist approach, needs investigation with reference to the transformations in cities.
Smellscape involves the interplay of factors like nature of smell, environmental context, and the perceiver which all are hard to capture.The smellscape acts differently in a different context which makes it unique and casespecific.Literature on smellscape presents a multitude of dimensions of urban areas, including various spatial and temporal aspects, such as seasonal smells of plants, making it dynamic in nature.The published literature on smellscape has not yet explored its full potential (Xiao 2018).Further research is therefore required to get better insight into the complex nature of urban smellscape.The conventional approach of urban planning, such as development control regulations are inadequate and they deal with some negative aspects of smell; but in all these instances of design, the smell is not used as a resource so the policies focusing on the positive aspect of smellscape are important for meaningful placemaking.However, the present literature on smellscape provides insight into the elements composing the smellscape, and the mapping techniques of smellscape, along with few models for placemaking, and very little research is done, specifically from developing countries, which draws attention towards transforming cities and the respective change in the richly organically evolved traditional historic urban smellscape.The study thus aims to investigate how different determinants influence the smellscape of a precinct and comparative analysis of four urban node precinct typologies, as representative cases from developing countries, namely, traditional, partially transformed, transformed, and majorly transformed (urban nodes), are assessed to get an insight into the urban smellscape of transforming the city.Based on interpretive epistemology from the cognition framework, the paper posits that the smellscape have a vital role in urban place experience, smellscape and urban place experience are interconnected and interdependent, it correlates and influences urban place liking and provides clues for theory building for the assessment of smellscape, an underexplored intangible aspect of sensory place experience.

Methodology
To understand the complex nature of the smellscape, physical, cultural, and social aspects of the urban landscape, and how they are linked and intertwined, and how they interact with and influence one another, an interpretive epistemology from the cognitive framework, the multi-methodical approach is implemented.Interpretive epistemology suggests qualitative research where the researcher tries to derive a theory about the phenomenon of interest from the existing observed data and supported with quantitative analysis (Bhattacherjee 2012).In this method, observations are interpreted at two level as subjective perspectives of the social participants and the meaning of the participants' experiences to built rich narrative story about the phenomenon in specific physical setting.This approach is inclusive of multiple disciplines from professional domains and may indeed make a contribution to understanding the relationship between smell and place.In previous research on smellscape, the method of smellwalk (Allen 2021;Conti, Guarino, and Bacenetti 2020) was developed and proved as the most efficient and appropriate perceptual method to collect smellscape clues at the precinct level.The researchers used people's language (Majid and Burenhult 2014) to collect data from interviews as respondents' feelings and responses in their own language indicate their evaluation of the quality of place (Henshaw 2013).The smellwalk is effective tool for data collection as it provides rich descriptive data about senses and place along with rating by participants which is important for understanding intangible aspects of sensescape.It is used by many researcher like Adams (2009), Bruceand Davies (2009) and Paquette and McCartney (2012) and specifically for urban smellscapes, as Bouchard (2013), Neil Bruce, Henshaw, andPayne (2015), and Perkins (2020).The smellwalk requires sensitized researcher with active smelling process to understand through the process of actively smelling, the researcher becomes sensitized to understand everyday life of people with reference to smell, it results in providing rich data which is more than vision and more than representation (McLean 2017).
The objective methods do not justify the study of intangible aspects like smellscape holistically.This methodology is appropriate as it provides opportunities to explore the place with peoples' perception.The range of different outdoor urban environment with unique land use, different set of activities, green spaces, and busy roads were rated by participants on the basis of detected smell and their liking.This rating is further investigated through qualitative interviewing method for triangulation.This provides the data analysis at different levels to understand complex phenomenon like smellscape.
Figure 1 explains the strategies and tactucs used as research methodology for smellscape study of identified case.The determinants of the sensory experience of place are reviewed on the Likert scale and evaluated with correlation analysis (between smell liking and place liking) as an objective dimension for measuring and understanding characteristics in a particular context.Then, the comparative analysis of the four cases having different smellscape scenarios are demonstrated.
The research question here is to what extent does the relationship between place liking and smell liking exist?Is there any pattern of the relationship in the traditional and contemporary built environment in terms of smell perception?At the strategic level, the contexts, user profile, the focus of study, and determinants showing the relationship of smell and place liking are explored.At the tactics level, the smellwalk (with predefined routes and stopping points as indicated in Figure 2) and semi-structured (pre-walk and post-walk) interviews from participants are implemented to collect data.The data are analyzed with the help  of correlation analysis and comparative analysis.Comparisons between onsite observations and opinion surveys (on place experience, smell detection, and perception) are performed which helps in the evaluation of reliability, validity and triangulation.The methodological framework of systems of inquiry (Groat and Wang 2002) provided the opportunity to understand and perform an objective assessment of the urban smellscape and urban place experience of four identified urban node precinct typologies.

Introduction to identified cases
Case study as a research method is used to explore the smellscape scenarios (Seawright 2008).The city of Nagpur (a typical example from tropical a composite climate) is taken as a representative case of Asian cities for heuristic purposes; it is one of the fastest developing cities with different spatial scales and precinct typologies.Many historic cities from developing nations are undergoing various transformations and has wide range of urban scenarios to explore from traditional built settings to transformed built settings.In urban areas, the nodes are most accessible spaces to everyone in everyday life.Nodes are surrounded with various functions, temporal activities and diverse users, which provides meaningful interaction of people and place (Trip 2007).Therefore, to study the smellscape of city of Nagpur, four nodes are selected as cases from four different typology of spaces that is traditional to transformed urban settings.These four cases with different spatial scales and typologies contain different smells varieties and provide unique experiences to examine.Hence, these four cases with different characteristics present within same city provides inclusive study of smellscape within unique contexts of Asian city.
The representative cases as urban node precinct typologies namely, traditional (historic core), partially transformed (planned neighbourhood), partially transformed (planned neighbourhood with green spaces), and majorly transformed (commercial core) are identified for investigation.All these nodes have unique blend of activities with different smell sources and presence of users from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds; furthermore, these cases also reflect people's daily city life offering various rich context-specific perceptual characteristics of smellscape for investigations.
(A) The representative case from traditional organically evolved urban node precinct typologies is taken as Kalyaneshwar Temple square (Mahal), which is the historic core of the Nagpur city and has a traditional character from Bhonsale dynasty architecture and mixed land-use of the building providing a unique sensory experience.
(B) The Bajiprabhu Deshpande square (Ram Nagar) is a representative case example from a partially transformed urban node precinct typology having a prominent temple precinct within the neighborhood.It was a planned neighborhood, away from the historic core, but with the course of time developed into a neighborhood with a partially contemporary character.(C) The Athrasta square (the junction of eight roads) (Lakshmi Nagar) is a representative case example from a transformed urban node precinct typology (away from the historic core, with dominant green space, different land-uses, and buildings in a planned manner).(D) The Variety square (Sitabuldi) is a majorly transformed urban node precinct typology which earlier was residential and now transformed into commercial land-use with contemporary facades.
The smellscape is context specific phenomenon affected by external features like climatic conditions, volatile nature of the scents, temporal activities.However, for unbiased and precise data collection the smellwalks are conducted at same time (morning and evening time) with same group of participants.Figure 2 shows the predefined smellwalk route with stopping points of all four cases.The smellwalks are conducted at morning and evening time when there are maximum activities taking place.Despite relatively small sample size (36 participants), the individuals of different age groups (aged between below 20 and above 60 years, as illustrated in Figure 3) and professions (with various individual characteristics) and participants playing a different role (illustrated in Figure 4) in each case are taken which provides rich data giving insights into the various interconnected dimensions of place experience.These participants are directly engaged with identified places either on a daily, occasional, or recurring basis and provided data to improve the understanding of how individuals experience the place.The residents and shop owners (insiders) are significant place users as they can relate to the place in their daily activities and may know the evolution of place and temporal activities within a precinct.Thus, the sample size of this type of individuals is about 45% of total participants as they are part of the socio-cultural identity of the place.Local visitors are the group of individuals (20% of total participants) having a strong connection in terms of functional or psychological attachment to the place.The outside visitors include the participants who are from other cities or other parts of the city occasionally visiting the place and are included to understand the place identity from non-residents' (outsiders) perspective.The group of professionals includes the participants who have knowledge of the present urban scenario, policies in terms of the determinants of the sense of place.The responses from this group are important for understanding the architecture, planning, designing, management, and maintenance of the place; about 15% of the participants are from this group.The participants from different age groups are considered for this research as the place experience differs according to age and role profile.The gender and age bias are nullified by using gender and age balanced sample selection.

Analysis and discussion
In order to understand the role and importance of different senses in the positive meaningful perception of a place experience, participant's opinion surveys and ratings for identified cases are noted.And, in these place experiences, the smell is observed as the crucial close-range sense in framing the sensory experience of a place.Figure 5 summarizes the comparative opinion and validates the question under exploration and further investigation of the complexity of the relationship between smell and place liking is implemented as follows.
With an objective of comparative comprehension of the smell and place liking, opinion surveys and participant's rating for smell and place liking are noted for all identified cases on the basis of a four-point Likert scale in which "4" is very much liked and "1" is very much disliked.The urban fabric of all four cases evolved with the passage of time, hence showing less or more   degree of traditional and contemporary-built fabric elements.The linear relation between two variables, the smell and the place, is observed.Figure 6 shows the relationship between smell and place rating, and Figure 7 and Table 1 summarize the correlation details for all identified cases.
(i) The average smell and place rating of case 4 (Variety square, Sitabuldi) are found to be the lowest (1.81 for smell and 1.92 for place) among all cases (refer to Figure 6).The land use and transportation made Variety square, Sitabuldi, a major shopping destination, creating huge  development pressure and hence offers substantial opportunities for encroachment which results in hindrance to traffic and pedestrian movement and insufficient open space made adverse impact on the place liking (Akshay Patil 2013).The smell is low rated, because of the low-maintained spaces, pollution from vehicles and surrounding construction activities, lack of vegetation, and smoke from various restaurant extraction vents.As the smell and place rating is the lowest in this case, and its correlation coefficient is also observed as the lowest [0.12, refer to Table 1 and Figure 7(d)], which is a mildly low positive correlation between smell and place liking.This smellscape can be considered as a feedback process of the system of the majorly transformed urban precinct.(ii) On the other hand, the average smell and place rating of case 3 (Athrasta square, Lakshmi Nagar) is found to be 2.21 for smell and 2.38 for the place (refer to Figure 6).Case 3 is a contemporarily transformed urban precinct with comparatively less mix of functions and activities.The precinct is also densely vegetated and dominated by residential buildings.The smell rating of case 3 corresponds with the presence of comparatively fresh air because of vegetation, controlled built densities, and improved sanitary systems, and hence attracting more joggers, sitters, and lingerers.And, the correlation coefficient of this case is observed as 0.26 [refer to Table 1 and Figure 7(c)] which is a low positive correlation between smell and place liking.(iii) To a great extent, average smell and place rating of case 2 (Bajiprabhu Deshpande square, Ram Nagar) (2.01 for smell and 2.09 for the place, refer to Figure 6) and case 3 is moderately similar, as it has the same mix of functions and activities, whereas the vegetation is slightly lesser in case 2. And, the presence of a traditional temple precinct (with religious ambiance) made this place a destination for senior citizens, devotees, and joggers (and Yoga performers).This place can often be seen with a dynamic disposition of festive (Ganesh Puja, Durga Puja, Ram Navami, and so forth -changing the smellscape drastically) and happening ambiance.(iv) In this case, the correlation coefficient between the smell and the place is observed as 0.42 [refer to Table 1 and Figure 7(b)], which is low positive correlation.As the sense of smell is associated with emotions, over a period of time, smellscape induces a sense of belonging and liking.Qualitative analysis of participants' (such as, residents, local visitors, and so forth) responses revealed a peculiar form of emotional association behaviour (however, the description of which is beyond the scope of this paper).(v) In contrast, the average smell and place rating of case 1 (Kalyaneshwar Temple square, Mahal) is found to be the highest (2.76 for smell and 2.81 for the place, refer to Figure 6) among all cases.Case 1 is an interesting and a rich traditional architectural historic core with the unique character of the indigenous built environment accommodating mix land use, varied facades (small unites, many openings -doors, windows, and balconies), safe, planned religious spaces (and procession path), lively and attractive shopping streets.Case 1 has an aromatically appealing traditional temple precinct as a dominating feature, additionally imparting aromas from surrounding vegetable and flower market, tempting odors from food vendors and hawkers, providing a wide range of smellscape experiences.In comparison with other cases, the correlation coefficient of this case is observed as 0.50 [refer to Table 1 and Figure 7(a)], which is moderately low positive correlation.
Out of all these cases, cases with more degree of traditionally built environment typology, senses are engaged to a greater extent, when compared with cases having more degree of new contemporary/transformed urban precinct typologies.Additionally, in all these cases, a positive correlation between smell and place rating is observed (refer to Figure 7).The sense of smell is intimately connected to the experience of a place.There are three major factors influencing the place experience of an individual: cognitive, behavioral, and emotional factors (Semken 2009).The cognitive and behavioral factors explain the physical characteristics of the place as form and function, whereas emotional factors explain nonphysical characteristics of the place like meaning.Investigation of the smellscape and place experience and their interconnected and interdependent relationship provided ground to understand smellscape and its vital role in shaping a place experience.This is done by identifying nine determinants (common in urban public spaces of Asian cities) for the place experience, namely -safety, air quality, sound quality, odor quality, built form and enclosure, vegetation, public interaction, public infrastructure, and waste management.The evaluation through these determinants is done in a number of subjective ways (such as theoretical lenses of age and gender), whereas a rating scale (having specific responses) with positive, negative, and neutral is presented in this paper.Figure 8 summarizes the percentage-wise comparative place experience evaluation (that is, the rating scale of positive, negative, and neutral) of all four identified cases with respect to above-mentioned nine determinants.
(A) In case 1 (Kalyaneshwar Temple square, Mahal), 57% of the participants rated safety and public realm-interaction as the highest positively affecting parameters considering the mix-use buildings on the edge of the street with many openings towards the street providing good street built interface encouraging human interaction, and promoting psychological and physical security, whereas 57% and 50 % of the participants rated vegetation and public realminfrastructure as least affecting parameters for place experience, respectively [Figure 8 front and flower vendors influencing the odor quality positively), whereas safety and built form and an enclosure are rated as the highest negatively affecting determinants (because of individual houses on large plots, there is almost no enclosure to the street, resulting in very less building and street interaction, which made the streets unsafe at afternoon and night-time) for place experience of Bajiprabhu Deshpande square, Ram Nagar.(C) The percentage-wise participant's opinion on place experience in case 3 is shown in Figure 8(c).Out of these determinants, vegetation and air quality are rated as the highest positively affecting determinants (because of the presence of greenery and the resultant good air quality) along with sound and odor quality, whereas built form and enclosure and public realm-interaction and safety are rated as the highest negatively affecting determinants (as the individual houses are on large plots, there is almost no enclosure to street and less public realm-interaction) for place experience of Athrasta square, Lakshmi Nagar.(D) Figure 8(d) shows the percentage-wise participant's opinion on place experience in case 4.
Out of these determinants, safety and public realm-interaction are rated as the highest positively affecting determinants (because of the presence of pedestrians), whereas air quality and public realm-infrastructure are rated as the highest negatively affecting determinants (because of heavy traffic, the air quality degraded, and additionally, due to the insufficient infrastructure in this overly density precinct) for place experience of Variety square, Sitabuldi.
The system of smellscape perception emerges from the four significant factors that are, smell (including its sources and type), environmental quality, place character, and lastly, the perceiver.There exists a close interrelationship between environmental quality and place liking (or perception).Similarly, a close interrelationship also exists between the type of smell detection and smellscape liking (or perception).In the survey, detected smells are noted and classified according to the standard smell wheel (Henshaw 2013).Smells are likely to be governed by the operating hours of the source of their production.Hence, smellwalks are so implemented that they cover almost all typical hours of a day.In the smellwalk, participants mentioned types of (detected) smell and further responded that how much is its impact on perceived smellscape as positive, negative, and neutral.Figure 9 shows the percentage-wise participant's opinion on smell detection and smellscape perception of all identified cases.congestion at the square as well as the smoke and other smell due to temporal activities and informal gatherings at the square sometimes creates unpleasant atmosphere) for smellscape perception of the Bajiprabhu Deshpande square, Ram Nagar.(C) In case 3, smells and fragrances of the vegetation and natural elements are rated as the highest positively affecting factors (as dense greenery and large trees are dotted in and around the node precinct creating healthy pleasant atmosphere), whereas smells from nonfood and air/traffic pollutants are rated as the highest negatively affecting factors (although in this urban node precinct, there is a presence of dense greenery and large trees, this node is a junction of eight vehicular roads with dense pedestrian crowds) for smellscape perception of Athrasta square, Lakshmi Nagar.(D) In case 4, out of huge diversified urban smells, hardly few detected smells are clearly rated as positively affecting factors [being a major urban node of the city, smells from eateries, street vendors, shops of various types of goods (that is why the name Variety square), and dense pedestrian crowds, attracting a lot of people to this (highly transformed commercial) precinct] for the urban smellscape experience of this precinct.And, comparatively more types of smells are detected and perceived as negatively affecting factors for the urban smellscape of Variety square, Sitabuldi precinct, namely smells from, air/traffic pollutants, and people (as roads are narrow with heavy traffic along with the huge number of pedestrian crowds, and very few trees within the dense urban fabric of the precinct making the atmosphere uncomfortable).
The comparative analysis of smell liking and place liking provides case-specific inferences with reference to degree of transformation of urban node precincts.The relationship between urban sensory experience and smellscape is represented with photographic documentation of all four cases inFigure 10.
In Case 1, the fragrance from flower vendors and the religious use of fragrance from temple offerings, camphor, and incense sticks creates a serene atmosphere.The everyday religious activities along with supporting vending activities make the place vibrant and provide rich sensory experience for most of the time.The smellscape is enriched with temporal activities during festivals, processions and weekly street markets around this node.The interesting architectural features and pleasant floral smell provide higher sense of place.
Case 4 is a majorly transformed urban precinct with mono-functional buildings, chaotic mix of functions and activities, encroached streets, pedestrian-vehicle conflicts, and dismissive and uninspired streetscapes.The everyday commercial activities, vending activities, pedestrian, and traffic concentration creates chaos for most of the time.The smell sources are aried, but the concentration of smell within the transformed built fabric does not provide significant smell experience and hence the smellscape liking gets affected and few times smell identity gets lost in chaos.The smellscape experience can be curated with the sensitive planning while transformation.

Conclusion
Based on interpretive epistemology from the cognition framework, comparative analysis using smell walk, semistructured (pre-walk and post-walk) interviews, on-site observations, the correlation between smell liking and place liking, opinion surveys (on place experience, smell detection, and perception) of smellscapes of four identified urban node precinct typologies as representative cases, namely, traditional, partially transformed, transformed, and majorly transformed urban nodes, are investigated.In these precinct typologies, moderately low positive, low positive, low positive, and mildly low positive correlation between place liking and smell liking are observed, respectively.The following is the contribution: (a) The smellscape has a vital role in urban place experience, and they are linked and intertwined.They interact with and influence one another in positive or negative way.The study of traditional urban node showed that the rich smellscape due to temple activities along with architecturally significant built form provides pleasant place experience.The pleasant place experience gets amplifies with variety of smells from religious temporal activities and get diminished when temple, vending and surrounding activities are close.(b) There exists a positive correlation between smell liking and urban place liking.The paper helps to understand the complexity of the olfactory system and the relationship between the smellscape and the urban place experience.Further transformations in the traditional urban areas are likely to emerge in the coming years.However, in such a transition process, the continued existence of richly organically evolved urban place experience depends mainly on multilevel holistic intervention measures concerning its both tangible and intangible determinants.(c) The representative cases are assessed with nine determinants, which are imperative for urban place experience, giving insights and linked implications for positively, negatively, and/or some remain neutral experience, which is critically case-specific.(d) Because of the growing urbanization, the richly organically evolved sensory experience, especially the smellscape of the traditional historic urban precincts, is also changing along with this transformation.The correlation analysis pointed out the declining relationship between the smellscapes and corresponding urban place experiences from traditional to transformed contemporary urban precincts.Conversely, repercussions on urban place experience are observed with the change in urban smellscape.
The historic cities from developing countries are facing similar issues related to transformation.This study can help in sensitizing the people and helps in making sensitive efforts for framing urban design planning policies.(e) As against predominantly visually engaged viewpoint to urban design, this paper contributes to the urban design theory building for the assessment of smellscape, an underexplored intangible aspect of sensory urban place experience, which leads toward appropriate decision making, the visitor (enjoyable and meaningful place) experience design, policymaking, and in city planning at large.(f) Further, this paper contributes to opening new avenues towards new territories of inquiry, uncovering new values associated with urban place experience.As the sense of smell is associated with emotions, over a period of time, thus smellscape induces a sense of belonging, which can become a future research agenda.(g) The sensitive approach for urban design and planning while dealing with transformation of place with emphasis on its unique smellscape is required.The paper helps in understanding the conflict in traditional and new development with reference to smellscape.This study helps in formulating the design recommendation focused on conservation of sense of place and creation of sense of place with multisensory approach.
Further research is required to understand how humans are transforming urban smellscape and slowly but surely the urban place experience as a whole.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Overview of identified cases with associated general information.

Figure 5 .
Figure 5. Comparative opinion (average rating) on the importance of sense affecting the positive perception of the identified cases.

Figure 6 .
Figure 6.Comparative smell and place (average) rating of all identified cases.

Figure 8 .
Figure 8. Comparative percentage-wise participant's opinion on place experience of all identified cases.

(
A) In case 1, the Kalyaneshwar Temple square, Mahal, out of the detected smells, floral scent is rated as the highest positively affecting factor (this rating is clearly because of the floral scent from the temple and surrounding flower shops within the precinct creating pleasant atmosphere), whereas smells from air/traffic pollutants and building materials are rated as the highest negatively affecting factors [this rating maybe for the smell from heavy traffic along with the nearby continuous (some or other) construction activities within the dense urban fabric of the precinct] for smellscape perception.A multitude of responses is noted for the smoky aroma from incense/Dhoop, cow dung (classified under other religious smells), and so forth.These aromas are opined as positively affecting sacred pleasant smellscape perception; at the same, few participants opined as negatively affecting perception classifying these aromas as a pollutant, smoky, filthy, and so forth.(B) In case 2, the floral scent and smell from food and waste management are rated as the highest positively affecting factors (because the floral scent from the temple along with the smell from eateries of surrounding areas within clean neighborhood creates interesting and a livable atmosphere) whereas smells from air/ traffic pollutants and smoke and other are rated as the highest negatively affecting factors (because air pollution from heavy traffic and

Table 1 .
Correlation between smell and place rating of all identified cases.