The article analyses the human transition from the world of things and per -sonal relations to the world of visual images and digital communication. Visual environment absorbs and concentrates ideology, politics, economic situation, moral state of society, and optimism in achieving common goals. It is an accurate portrait of the state of society. To create an ecologically healthy visual environment, the inner space of the dwelling is unlocked, while the outer, street space, resisting geometric coercion, is restricted and enclosed. The author constitutes the discipline that studies the visual environment – visual ecology – and defines the specificity of its subject. Its connection with ecology as such, on the one hand, and with visual urbanism, on the other hand, is pointed out. The logic of visual environment research requires the transfer of research interest from the abstract sign to the symbol, from the straightness of highways to the natural line of natural locations, from sterile regularity to the natural line of the landscape. In the case of visual-ecological expertise the measure of visual information is important, from the point of view of which the number of images surrounding a human being turns out to be abundant, and their size, intensity of influence and obsessive strategy of attracting attention – excessive. The article thematizes the imagination’s ability to embody, to define, to design. Imagination is interpreted as a process of transforming an image into reality, into the object world, into a volitional impulse, into a strategy of behavior and decision-making. © 2024, Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.