This paper reviews several theoretical frameworks of visual analysis used in Visual Impact Assessment (VIA) for design decisions in architecture, urban landscape and urban planning. The discussion will focus on the underlying issues of preferences and predictions between designer and lay-public, methodologies of visual analysis, and computing media technologies due to fact that these components primarily contribute towards the result of VIA. Two different sets of visual analysis (i.e. designer’s and layman’s points of view) are presented based on Sanoff’s (1991) arguments that lay-public preferences are always become a second opinion compared to the judgments by designers. The necessity of developing computer-aided VIA (caVIA) model becomes critical as urban spaces and designs nowadays are dealing with more complex (Rafi et al., 2006) information (or requirements) and required fast decisions through visual analysis that often provides insufficient visual analysis (input). According to Bai (1998), in addition to the use of the computer in architectural design process, there is also a need for the computer to be involved in the processes of visual impact analysis and assessment in urban spaces. In fact, current and emerging technologies allow visual analysis to give a better and more accurate understanding when dealing with urban landscape and built environment. Three major components will be critically reviewed which are; (1) decision making in VIA, (2) Visualisation in Landscape (Ian Bishop, 2005) and (3) Visual Simulation (Sheppard, 1989). This research also considers the possibilities of new and emerging computing media used at different stages to represent the environments in VIA design. It includes photographs, 3D modelling, Quicktime VR, animation, VRML and real-time simulation. These theories will then be developed and used in the VIA experiments to understand the impact of the visuals in different media for viewers’ understanding. This paper concludes with a discussion and suggestion of analysis framework to be used for the visual experiments. 