Environment and Behavior – serie

What meanings do buildings and places convey to the people who use and visit them? Too often, design competitions and signature architecture result in costly eyesores that do not work. How can sponsors and clients get more meaningful results? In answer to these questions, Dr Nasar, supported by riveting studies of competitions and Peter Eisenman's competition-winning design for the Wexner Center at the Ohio State University, suggests the use of pre-jury evaluation (PJE). He shows the potential value of this approach as well as visual quality programming for many kinds of environmental design for which the client wants to convey certain desirable meanings. The studies, from those specific to the Wexner Center to those covering the scope of history, point to an alternative method for shaping the visual form of buildings, places and cities.

'Territorial functioning' refers to an interlocked system of sentiments, cognitions, and behaviors that are highly place-specific, and socially and culturally determined and maintaining. In this book, Ralph Taylor explores the consequences of human territorial functioning for individuals, small groups, and the ecological systems in which they operate. His exploration is illuminated by his evolutionary perspective, and grounded in empirical studies by social scientists and in theoretical work on the evolution of social and spatial behaviors. He systematically reviews the related research and theory, and indicates the importance of territorial functioning to current social and environmental problems. Contrary to popular wisdom, he argues that territorial functioning is relevant only to limited locations, such as street blocks, and not to neighborhoods or nation states, and that it reduces conflicts and helps maintain settings and groups. His theoretically focused examination of all that has been discovered about human territorial functioning will interest a wide variety of environmental psychologists and designers, urban sociologists, social psychologists, planners, and ethologists, and their students.

People in Cities is about the experience of urban life. Edward Krupat analyzes current research and theory about the ways in which cities affect people. He contrasts urban living with life in smaller communities, and compares popular notions and stereotypes about city dwellers with the results of empirical research. Taking a social psychological perspective, he integrates ideas from psychology, sociology, urban planning, and architecture. Non-technical and readable, the book offers a sophisticated examination of models of urban life and explores the issues of stress and crowding, urban social relationships, images of the city, and the impact of good and poor design.

How do the physical surroundings affect people who work in offices and factories? Work Places attempts to answer this question by summarising the psychological and social influences of work settings. Environmental psychologist Eric Sundstrom, in collaboration with Mary Graehl Sundstrom, discusses research and theory concerning individual satisfaction and performance, interpersonal relationships, group cohesion and organisational effectiveness. Separate chapters address the physical aspects of the environment - temperature and air quality, lighting and windows, noise, music, colour and workstations - the symbolic aspects of the work environment - status and self-identity - and issues of communication, privacy, small groups and the organisation as a whole. Work Places offers the reader an integration of research, theory and history. Professionals and students in psychology, management, architecture and environmental design will find it informative, interesting and readable.

How can the quality of environments be evaluated? This book describes ways of assessing the perceptions and experiences of the users so that planners, designers, and managers may take them into account. Ervin Zube first presents the problem of environmental evaluation in the context of public policies promulgated for the planning, design, and management of urban, rural, and wild environments in North America. After a brief history of US environmental policy, he goes on to consider the differences between policy mandates for evaluation and the actual conduct of evaluation studies. He identifies three stages as important for assessment: the 'inventory', or evaluation of existing environments; consideration of alternatives, or evaluation of possible future environments; and, after the plan is implemented, the design or management programme, or evaluation of the modified environment. He illustrates his points with reference to actual evaluations of environments from housing projects to Niagara Falls, at each of these stages, considering each case study in the relevant policy context. Applied behavioural and social scientists and all those in the planning and design and management professions will find this a useful text.

In this book, first published in the UK in 1984, John Cone and Stephen Hayes explore the relation between physical environment and human behaviour. A fledgling field at the time, this study of the roots of environmentally relevant psychology has proved both fruitful and exciting. Within this text, Cone and Hayes first explore the fields of physical and behavioural technology, and the few studies previously conducted around the latter. They then focus their attention on the principles and methodologies of the study of environmentally relevant behaviour and psychology, absorbing the work undertaken thus far on factors such as population control and noise pollution, and assembling its conclusions. A summary of the tasks facing researchers at the time then rounds off a text which will be invaluable in the analysis of the early and often trepid steps taken in the study of the physical environment and its connections to human behaviour.

Architects, city planners, and other design professionals have used theory and research from psychology and other behavioral sciences to make their work more responsive to the needs of the people who use the buildings, parks, and city streets they help to shape. This book describes in detail thirteen cases in which that approach was followed. It analyzes the use of environmental design research in each case, demonstrating how it has made a positive contribution in these cases and how its use can improve design and planning processes in general and thus the quality of the built and natural environments.

Architects, city planners, and other design professionals have used theory and research from psychology and other behavioral sciences to make their work more responsive to the needs of the people who use the buildings, parks, and city streets they help to shape. This book describes in detail thirteen cases in which that approach was followed. It analyzes the use of environmental design research in each case, demonstrating how it has made a positive contribution in these cases and how its use can improve design and planning processes in general and thus the quality of the built and natural environments.

This book reveals the social basis for public space use, design and management. The authors - an architect/environmental designer, a landscape architect, an environmental psychologist, and an open space administrator - offer a well-integrated perspective of how to integrate public space and public life. They contend that three critical human dimensions should guide the process of design and management of public space: the users' essential needs, their spatial rights, and the meanings they seek. To develop and explain these three dimensions, the authors draw on the history of public life and public space, evidence from recent social research, and a series of original case studies, all amply illustrated. Public Space offers an innovative approach for adapting the dimensions to the unique social and environmental context of each project.

What meanings do buildings and places convey to the people who use and visit them? Too often, design competitions and signature architecture result in costly eyesores that do not work. How can sponsors and clients get more meaningful results? In answer to these questions, Dr Nasar, supported by riveting studies of competitions and Peter Eisenman's competition-winning design for the Wexner Center at the Ohio State University, suggests the use of pre-jury evaluation (PJE). He shows the potential value of this approach as well as visual quality programming for many kinds of environmental design for which the client wants to convey certain desirable meanings. The studies, from those specific to the Wexner Center to those covering the scope of history, point to an alternative method for shaping the visual form of buildings, places and cities.

This book distils thirty years of research on the impacts of jail and prison environments. The research program began with evaluations of new jails that were created by the US Bureau of Prisons, which had a novel design intended to provide a non-traditional and safe environment for pre-trial inmates and documented the stunning success of these jails in reducing tension and violence. This book uses assessments of this new model as a basis for considering the nature of environment and behavior in correctional settings and more broadly in all human settings. It provides a critical review of research on jail environments and of specific issues critical to the way they are experienced and places them in historical and theoretical context. It presents a contextual model for the way environment influences the chance of violence.

The Dignity of Resistance chronicles the four decade history of Chicago's Wentworth Gardens public housing residents' grassroots activism. This comprehensive case study explores why and how these African-American women creatively and effectively engaged in organizing efforts to resist increasing government disinvestment in public housing and the threat of demolition. Roberta M. Feldman and Susan Stall, utilizing a multi-disciplinary lens, explore the complexity and resourcefulness of Wentworth women's grassroots, organizing the ways in which their identities as poor African-American women and mothers both circumscribe their lives and shape their resistance. Through the inspirational voices of the activists, Feldman and Stall challenge portrayals of public housing residents as passive, alienated victims of despair. We learn instead how women residents collectively have built a cohesive, vital community, cultivated outside technical assistance, organizational and institutional supports, and have attracted funding - all to support the local facilities, services and programs necessary for the everyday needs for survival, and ultimately to save their home from demolition.

The Dignity of Resistance chronicles the four decade history of Chicago's Wentworth Gardens public housing residents' grassroots activism. This comprehensive case study explores why and how these African-American women creatively and effectively engaged in organizing efforts to resist increasing government disinvestment in public housing and the threat of demolition. Roberta M. Feldman and Susan Stall, utilizing a multi-disciplinary lens, explore the complexity and resourcefulness of Wentworth women's grassroots, organizing the ways in which their identities as poor African-American women and mothers both circumscribe their lives and shape their resistance. Through the inspirational voices of the activists, Feldman and Stall challenge portrayals of public housing residents as passive, alienated victims of despair. We learn instead how women residents collectively have built a cohesive, vital community, cultivated outside technical assistance, organizational and institutional supports, and have attracted funding - all to support the local facilities, services and programs necessary for the everyday needs for survival, and ultimately to save their home from demolition.