Abstract: In an urban area, users use spaces on the basis of preferences and importances given. User preferences are usually common for a society due to common socio-cultural background. The paper attempts to understand the differences in user preferences of residents of two select localities in a developing city of Nagpur in India by studying the relationship between their spatial cognition and spatial configuration. Spatial configuration is quantified by axial line modeling based on space syntax theory. Local integration (R3), global integration (Rn) and connectivity are considered as parameters of spatial configuration. Interpretive parameters are synergy and intelligibility. The correlation study between parameters of cognition such as frequency of recognition, frequency of use and syntactic parameters is done. It has highlighted the differences in user preferences due to different spatial configurations.