FCL Global Seminar: Disentangling the Social and the Aesthetic in Urban Design

It is well known that the design of buildings and urban environments has a strong influence on our emotional state and experience. Urban places, in particular, are also typically experienced in various levels of human occupancy – depending on the time of day, places from main streets to parks, can be almost empty or bustling with pedestrians, patrons, residents and visitors. How does the presence of other people influence our subjective experience of places? Does the design of urban environments moderate the effects of social presence? Using multiple measurement of human emotions drawing from environmental psychology and neuroscience, we begin to understand how design and presence of people jointly modulate our experiences in cities. In this talk, I will present the conceptual background and findings from recent and ongoing work done as part of the FCL2 Cognition Perception and Behaviour in Urban Environments project and more recently the IntraCREATE SEED project ‘NICE’, and how this can contribute to the planning of future urban developments.