 | Urban Experience and Design: Contemporary Perspectives on Improving the Public Realm Subjects: Behavioral Sciences; Bioscience; Built Environment; Environment and Sustainability; Neuroscience; Planning; Psychological Science; Architecture; Environmental Humanities; Environmental Psychology; Architectural Design Drawing and Presentation; Sustainable Architecture; City and Urban Planning; Environmental Communication; Embracing a biological and evolutionary perspective to explain the human experience of place, Urban Experience and Design explores how cognitive science and biometric tools provide an evidence-based foundation for architecture and planning. Aiming to promote the creation of a healthier and happier public realm, this book describes how unconscious responses to stimuli, outside our conscious awareness, direct our experience of the built environment and govern human behavior in our surroundings. This collection contains 15 chapters, including contributions from researchers in the US, the UK, the Netherlands, France and Iran. Addressing topics such as the impact of eye-tracking analysis and seeing beauty and empathy within buildings, Urban Experience and Design encourages us to reframe our understanding of design, including the narrative of how modern architecture and planning came to be in the first place. This volume invites students, academics and scholars to see how cognitive science and biometric findings give us remarkable 21st-century metrics for evaluating and improving designs, even before they are built. Justin B. Hollander is a professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning and director of the C.A.G.S in Urban Justice and Sustainability at Tufts University. His research and teaching is in the areas of physical planning, big data, shrinking cities and the intersection between cognitive science and the design of cities. He is the author of seven other books on urban planning and design, including Cognitive Architecture: Designing for How We Respond to the Built Environment (with Ann Sussman) and Urban Social Listening: Potential and Pitfalls for Using Microblogging Data in Studying Cities, and was recently inducted as a fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners. He hosts the Apple podcast 'Cognitive Urbanism.' Ann Sussman is a registered architect, researcher and college instructor. Her book, Cognitive Architecture: Designing for How We Respond to the Built Environment (Routledge, 2015), coauthored with Justin B. Hollander, won the Place Research Award from the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) in 2016. She currently teaches a new course on perception and the human experience of place, 'Architecture and Cognition,' at the Boston Architectural College (BAC). In 2020, she founded and became president of the nonprofit The Human Architecture + Planning Institute, Inc. (theHapi.org). |
