Environmental stressors, urban design and planning: implications for human behaviour and health

Abstract

Urban and neighbourhood design can moderate the effects of building design on human behaviour and well-being, and vice versa. The interdependence between built environments across scales is critical yet is often poorly understood. This paper overviews several psychological processes linking human behaviour to environmental design, both inside and out. In particular, the paper focuses on two environmental stressors ‒ crowding and noise ‒ in four daily indoor environments: residential, school, work and commuting. These two stressors are often linked and can adversely impact people if improperly designed. Moreover, urban and neighbourhood design can mitigate such negative effects. Key suggestions for practitioners and policy makers include proper acoustic design, easily accessible semi-public or outdoor places and walkable streets. Some illustrations of the nexus between neighbourhood and building design show that the tendency of research traditions in environment and behaviour to focus on one scale of environmental design probably misses important human-environment transactions.

Notes

1. The policy definition of household crowding varies by countries, e.g. more than one person per room in the US and the Netherlands while 1.5 persons per room in the UK and Spain.