What you can learn from Urban Design for Wherever you Live

Urban designers have done oodles of studies over the years, and some of the lessons that their work teaches are relevant whether you live in a city or not and their research outcomes align with those of researchers working at different scales, including single rooms and structures.

Work by urban designers has shown, for example, that:

• Biophilic design makes human lives better (as previously discussed in this article, for instance), whether you are considering the effects of seeing a green leafy plant in a classroom or on a street front, being in a place with prospect and refuge, building with natural materials that are visible to space users, or designing in line with any of the other tenets of biophilic design. An often-overlooked resource: viewing gently moving water, whether it is in a burbling brook or desktop fountain, is always desirable.
• Natural environments are indeed mentally refreshing to view and to visit, because they fascinate us. However, an urban space that is fascinating, because of details in decorative details, for example, can also be a cognitively restorative place to spend time.  Many historic zones can be particularly refreshing places.
• Nonverbal communication is real and powerful. It seems unspoken messages are important whether they come from public art, façade design, allocation of resources at a city scale, or a desktop photograph.
• National culture drives responses to spaces—something we’ve previously discussed here—and design can also support group-level cultures.
• Design can improve health; more walkable neighbourhoods can have healthy residents, for instance.
• Awe has significant and important effects on how people think and behave, their mental and physical health. Need more information on how you can design in awe-inspiring experiences?  Read this article.  Similarly, art influences how people live in a space, which was reviewed here.
• Humans value privacy, not being visible to others, from time to time, which we’ve covered here when we talk about privacy. Being in view can be good sometimes, however.  Spaces that can be seen from windows in nearby homes and offices can be safer places to spend time.
• People are social animals, and some spaces need to support spending time together and socializing, when that’s what humans are in the mood to do. Humans still value knowing where their territories, the spaces that they can feel are theirs and that they control (at least for the moment (say the moment(s) that they’re sitting in a chair in a waiting room)), begin and end.  When neighbours and passers-by get a clue, from the careful placement of a few plants or a change in paving materials, or something similar, where a public zone ends and a private one begins, interactions between space users are much more pleasant.
• Reasonable numbers of environmental choices, such as seating options in a plaza, make people happiest—and making selections in general gives us a great mental burst of “feel-goodness.”
• Visual complexity, visual clutter, matters on streetscapes just as it does in your living room (as discussed in this article).