Diferencial semántico evaluación de ambientes

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The Power of Place: The Application of Environmental Psychology in Urban Planning by Erika Lew

If asked to name your favorite place, how would you choose? You might first think of your home or, conversely, recall a faraway place that represents a personal ideal. You might think of a place of great natural beauty, a nice spot in the city, or even an ordinary place that is not outwardly special. Possibly few others would understand its appeal, but all the same this place makes you feel good. Being there, you feel especially energized, relaxed, or perhaps at peace with life. Whether or not we can finally choose a favorite, this question prompts us to consider how much our surroundings affect us. Each place that comes to mind represents a mix of values and impressions rooted in both objective and subjective qualities. And just as places can make us feel good, they can have the opposite effect, or little effect at all. To what extent are our feelings grounded in the physical form of a place? Through our reflections, we can see that it is important to evaluate how we relate to our environments and examine what role they play in our experiences. Our surroundings shape how we live and how we feel. This “favorite place” question gets to the heart of place meaning, a concept that refers to the layers of associations that we attach to places. Place meaning is a central area of study in the field of environmental psychology – a branch of psychology that is defined loosely as “the study of the interface between human behavior and the sociophysical environment” (Stokols, 1978). Simply put, environmental psychologists aim to identify the ways in which places affect people, and vice versa. Their research is practically relevant in the context of urban planning. By systematically evaluating places from a psychological perspective, in terms of how people perceive their environments, how they interact within them, how their attitudes and behaviors are affected, and in turn, how their behaviors shape the environment, we can discover ways to make cities more livable. The findings of environmental psychologists relate to everyone, and should 30 | urban action 2006

be taken beyond the academic realm and put into practice by urban planners.

Interdisciplinary approaches to urban planning In considering the life of cities – how they function, what they represent, and what they could be – planners integrate knowledge from a range of disciplines, from geography to sociology to history to political science. Psychology, though, is a field with slightly less obvious connections. As a student of both urban studies and psychology, I have often wondered whether there could be a more productive exchange between the two. Urban planners tend to the way the built environment affects our lives, typically exploring how economic, social, and

Our surroundings shape how we live and how we feel. cultural factors play out in the form and function of cities. Psychological factors seem to be given less attention, though. Because psychological affect is subjective and not immediately tangible, perhaps it is considered a secondary concern or a matter of aesthetics. Urban planning often benefits from interdisciplinary exchange in practice. One of the best-known applications of social science research in urban planning and design was William H. Whyte’s Street Life Project, in which he set out to explain why some of New York’s public plazas thrived while others sat nearly empty. By recording and observing activity in a number of spots, Whyte identified elements that either attracted or deterred people. His findings, detailed in the classic film The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (1980), showed that the success of “small urban spaces” had much to do with their form: people were drawn to multiple seating options, street food, and features that create a feeling of enclosure. Though the findings seem simple,


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