On the Internet, there are disputes about urban innovations — wide sidewalks, pedestrian zones and squares. What should be a modern city to suit everyone? To the aid of architects, urbanists and designers comes… neurobiology!
Why do some places in the city attract crowds of visitors, while others remain deserted? What makes us feel uncomfortable in areas built up with monotonous high-rise buildings? Is there a formula for an ideal urban environment? Experimental psychologist Colin Ellard is convinced that if we want to know how to make our cities more pleasant places to live, we should start with the main thing — with our own feelings.
“Today, researchers have many ways in which we can assess how comfortable a person feels in a city. We can track the direction of his gaze, heartbeat, state of the nervous system, gait and speed of movement. Finally, we can measure his brain activity. All this data is then analyzed to identify patterns and understand how certain elements of the environment affect our well-being, mood, health, and performance. Such an approach can make urban space planning even more responsive to human needs and desires. Imagine: we could use wearable devices to collect information about how people behave in the city throughout the day — how they choose a route, what attracts their attention, what annoys them and what cheers them up. The data from the devices goes directly to the laboratories, where they are processed and then analyzed with the participation of urban planners, landscape designers, and environmentalists. I think that such a monitoring system would create an environment in which each of us would like to live.
- What are people talking about in the city?
In addition to data collection, experimental verification of our hypotheses and theoretical constructions is necessary. Creating new models of the urban environment is costly: we cannot endlessly start construction, redraw layouts and move objects in order to understand which option will be optimal. We need faster and less expensive ways. And in such a situation, virtual simulation methods come to the rescue. We tested these methods in the immersive virtual simulation laboratory at the University of Waterloo (Canada). Using special displays and motion-tracking technology, study participants were placed inside a realistic XNUMXD simulator. They could walk freely, look in different directions, while the sensors transmitted information about their behavior and feelings to laboratory computers. Locations repeated various variants of urban landscapes: with a strict or free layout, more and less open spaces, various options for organizing space. We found that in places with a clear and uniform structure, people show patterned behavior, they relax, their attention becomes distracted. In contrast, spaces that are more randomly organized increase concentration, excitement, and nervous tension.
By choosing the color, shape and location of objects, urbanists can make us feel like we are in nature.
On another occasion, we used sensors attached to the bodies of volunteers. In a study conducted by the BMW-Guggenheim Mobile Laboratory, we were able to show that being in green spaces not only makes people happier, but also acts on a physiological level: there were signs of relaxation in their autonomic nervous system. More importantly, we were able to show exactly which characteristics of the surrounding space produce such an effect. It turned out that landscapes immersed in greenery had a calming effect even if they were generated on a computer. That is, our visual perception is tailored to certain environmental parameters (color, saturation, contrast), which cause a response from the nervous system. We were able to determine these parameters (the ratio of clear, well-marked contours and more vague outlines).
These data not only allow us to understand what kind of response in the brain’s reward system is caused by various natural and man-made landscapes. They give room for new creative solutions. For example, by experimenting with color, shape, and placement of objects, urbanists can make us feel like we are in nature. This is especially important for cities with high building density, where there is little free space. By skilfully alternating zones of order with zones of chaos, placing infrastructure elements where we expect to find them, urbanists can improve the atmosphere of the city, making it more comfortable and friendly. Perhaps this will change our stereotypical ideas about city life, and we ourselves will suffer less from stress, fatigue and illness.”