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| New York City Chinatown, The Bowery New York City, New York nychinatown.org |
Have you lately been feeling sad? Find yourself giving into your compulsions more frequently? Is your stress level at an all time high? No, yours truly has not a self-help blog. Rather, it maybe your city that causing your feelings of anxiety. Colin Ellard's article for Aeon magazine, "Streets with no game," presents his research on how boring streetscapes increase feelings of sadness, addiction, and stress. Mr. Ellard asks the question "Is urban design a matter of public health?"
When Mr. Ellard conducted his research in New York City's Lower East Side, he was interested to find out if the Whole Foods mega-market on East Houston Street affect the psychological state of the local residents. Mr. Ellard writes, "...my interest was more pedestrian: how did this megastructure-plopped into a neighbourhood populated with with tiny bars and restaurants, bodegas, pocket parks, playgrounds and many different styles of housing-influence the psychological state of the urban pedestrian?" He was curious to find the mind-set of urban dwellers, who frequent historic restaurants and bars, in response to blank sidewalks under their feet and walls of frosted glass on one side; streams of loud taxis on the other side?
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| CBGB James and Karla Murray New York City, New York therealdeal.com |
Colin Ellard writes, "Some of the results were predictable. When planted in front of Whole Foods, my participants stood awkwardly, casting around for something of interest to latch on to and talk about." The participants evaluated their emotional state as "...being on the wrong side of 'happy' and their state of arousal was close to bottoming out." The bracelets on their wrists echoed the pattern. They were bored and unhappy. Asked to describe the site, they responded using words such as bland, monotonous, and passionless.
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| Whole Foods Market in The Bowery wholefoods.com |
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| Jan Gehl Photograph by Ashley Bristowe ifhp.org |
Something as simple as changing a building's appearance and structure can produce dramatic results in the way a city is used. Mr. Ellard writes, "Not only are people more likely to walk around in cityscapes with open and lively facades, but the kinds if things that they do in such places actually change. They pause, look around and absorb their surrounding while in a pleasant state of mind positive affect and with a lively, attentive nervous system." All of this makes people actually want to in that environment. The byproduct of this reaction is many cities are carefully restricting new construction building codes that guide the some of the factors to a more joyful streetscape. For example, in cities such as Stockholm, Melbourne, and Amsterdam, building codes insist that mew construction cannot just be metaphorically dropped onto the site. The number of doorways per unit of sidewalk length is lower and there rules for transparency between the building and sidewalk in the guise of clear windows with two-way views.
Based on Mr. Gehl's ideas, "a good city should be designed so that the average walker moving at a rate of about 5km per hour, sees an interesting new site about once every five seconds." You are not going get that in front of the ubiquitous Whole Foods or monolithic institutional building. Essentially, if streetscapes were designed with continuous closed facades, such as the ones on supermarkets or business headquarters, people will feel less happy, move quicker, not pausing to look. However, Mr. Ellard asks, "what is really at stake here?" The real risk is epidemic levels of absolute boredom; not streets filled with sad unmotivated pedestrians.
Believe it or not, studies on boredom have been conducted by individuals repulsed by this particular feeling. William James, one of the founders of modern psychology, wrote in 1890, stimulation is the indispensable requisite for pleasure in an experience. In contemporary times, the late University of Toronto psychologist Daniel Berlyne argued, "much of our behaviour is motivated by curiosity alone: the need to slake our incessant thirsts for the new." Mr. Berlyne used a branch of applied mathematics-information theory-as his methodology for studies on how information-seeking is the primary engine for human behavior. Information-seeking is a set binary set of idea, born in the Bell Telephone Company laboratories during the 1940s, designed to comprehend the transmission of signals over the wires.
Colin Ellard goes into a somewhat technical explanation of how information-seeking works but suffice it to say he finds a connection "...between the technicalities of phone transmission and an understanding of urban psychology." Daniel Berlyne concluded, "it wasn't just signals sent along wires that could be characterised in terms of information content, but any kind of object that we can perceive, including visual displays..." Therefore, the reason for the abysmally low readings of happiness and arousal from Mr. Ellard's study participants standing in from of blank facades becomes more apparent. At the emotional level, a blank facade fails because humans are biologically pre-disposed to prefer places defined by "...complexity, interest, and the passing of messages of one kind or another."
The converse of this situation fundamentally means boredom. Although, Mr. Ellard concedes that while we may all have different definitions of what boredom is, some of the symptoms are obvious: the painfully slow passage of time, restlessness that manifests itself in the form of an unpleasant mental state as well as the physical symptoms: fidgeting, checking your phone for the umpteenth time (like none of you have ever done that), the 1000-mile stare; maybe yawning. Some researchers have gone as far as saying boredom is a sign of (or defined by) "a state of low arousal." In some studies, when participants were asked to sit quietly, without anything to do-a possible boredom trigger-physiological arousal drops. Nevertheless, Daniel Berlyne and recently other psychologists, have suggested "that boredom can sometimes be accompanied by high states of arousal and perhaps even stress."
More recent research was conducted by cognitive neuroscientist James Danckert of the University of Waterloo, Canada, with his student Colleen Merrifield. In the study, participants were brought to the laboratory and connected to machines that measured their heart rates and skin conductance, and were shown some videos. The video were carefully designed to elicit a variety of emotions: from sadness to tedium. Colin Ellard writes, "What was more interesting was that participants contributed saliva samples that were later analysed for the presence of cortisol, a hormone associate with a range of human stress-related ailments..." The researchers found "...that even brief boring episodes increased levels of cortisol, which fits all with other recent suggestions that there could actually be a relationship between boredom and mortality rates."
If the fact that boredom could lead to increased mortality rates was not bad enough, it seems that it could also lead to more risky behavior, including addiction relapse. Surveys done among addicts-i.e. substance and non-substance-suggest that addicts have a typically higher level of boredom, which is a common predictor of relapse or risky behavior. Ms. Merrifield and Mr. Danckert have suggested that even the slightest exposure to tedious experiences is enough to alter the brain and body's chemistry in a that generates stress. Colin Ellard concedes, "It might seem extreme to say that a brief encounter with a boring building could be seriously hazardous to one's health, but what about the cumulative effects of immersion...in the same oppressively dull surroundings?"
This is a question that has long intrigued psychologists, especially after psychologist Donald Hebb's 1962 discovery that rats who lived in more enriched environments were vast more intellectually superior than rats who lived in a more austere environment. The enriched rats were able to complete more complex mazes in shorter times then the spartan rats. The enriched rats's intellectual superiority was later confirmed by studies completed by Mark Rosenzweig at the University of California, Berkeley who concluded that the enriched rats had thicker neocortex with better synaptic connections between brain cells. How does all this apply to urban design?
Taken together, the studies of extreme and moderate forms of environmental deprivation give us compelling evidence that monotonous environments can lead to stress, impulsive behavior, lower levels of positive affect, and risky behavior. Mr. Ellard writes, "At this point, we simply don't know the extent to which such effects might be produced by simple daily exposure to poorly designed urban environments or building interiors because the studies have not been done yet." What is known are the understood idea of neuroplasticity and the known effects of deprivation and enrichment in extreme environments, together with studies carried by Jan Gehl and others, which gives us sufficient evidence to believe that sterile homogenous places have a measurable effect on our behavior and brain. Thus, we can conclude that good urban and building is a matter of public health.
This begs the questions, "Why would anyone think it a good idea to build a large, featureless building at ground level? What motivates a developer to erect an endless stretch of suburban housing where each individual unit is identical and, in the language of information theory, low in entropy?" The obvious answer is economics, it is cheaper to design three or four different models of houses and use them as templates for the rest of the development, however, what abut institutional buildings?
Why build a closed off street-level elevation that will bore a pedestrian to tears? Mr. Ellard speculates, "Perhaps the owners of such properties don't see much gain: it hardly seems in the best interests of a major bank to attract a crowd of happy lingerers to the fronts of their buildings, rather than serious customers who get in and get out again." Blogger speculates that another reason is to dissuade vagrants and potential criminal activity. Regardless, a friendly elevation might detract from the more business-like image a bank wants to convey. We want our banks to be places where are assets are carefully monitored in a secure fortress, not the local farmers market. Colin Ellard tells us, "There are other reasons why buildings fall short of our psychological needs. One has to do with a radical shift in architectural design, which entire buildings become signs..."
Another factor is our reliance (dare blogger say addiction) on digital technology, which has re-focused our attention noticeably downward toward our phone screens and away from our physical surroundings. This has become such an acute problem that during her tenure as New York City's transportation planner, Janette Sadik-Khan ordered large, eye-catching graphics to be painted onto the sidewalks of the city's busiest and most dangerous intersections to remind pedestrians to put the device away and be more aware of their surroundings lest they get run over. While this may seem like nothing more than changing the walk-talk-text behavior, it is symptomatic of a more profound change-we no longer care about our surroundings because we are too busy on the phone. In a certain sense, we are not there and our environment now exists in the digital world.
The trend toward the hybridization of the real and virtual places in urban environments has an ideological foundation. In their book S, M, L, XL (1995), architects Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau call for "empty-box designs and what they call 'the generic city.'" They argue that ornament be it: a specific type of facade design, idiosyncratic street design, or specific cultural iconography becomes, in a sense, exclusionary. We are thrown together in a world that transcends prior cultural delineation, thus any type of design with historic references will alienate those individuals who do not share the same history. Mr. Koolhaas told Der Spiegel in 2011,
In an age of mass immigration, a mass similarity of cities might inevitable. Cities such as Dubai, where the majority of residents are immigrants, function like airports in which the same shoos are always in the same places. Everything is defined by function, and nothing by history. This can also be liberating.
Or it could be alienating because there is no sense of individual identity for the city. Nothing that makes the city unique. Mr. Koolhaas might be right about the inevitability of generic functional design in the age of globalization. Be that as it may, unless our virtual lives supplant our physical surroundings, universal adoption of generic functional design will have consequences illustrated thus far. Mr. Ellard writes, "Human beings have evolved to operate in environments with optimal levels of complexity related to our biology. We seek out such settings with our eyes, our bodies, our hands and our feet. In turn, the design and appearance of those settings, by affecting our bodies, tap directly into ancient circuits meant to produce responses and emotions that are adaptive." Fundamentally, this keeps us in tune with our surroundings, maintain acceptable states of arousal and alertness, and ultimately allow us to adapt. All this is not possible in a generic functional environment.
One could argue that boredom is a way of modern life and there are even acceptable levels of boredom. When the external world fails to engage us, we turn inward, toward the landscape of the mind. Some would argue that boredom can lead to creativity. Perhaps, it could lead us to use our innate wit and intelligence. However, streetscapes that disregard our need for sensory stimulation contradict our ancient impulses for the new and will ultimately lead to discomfort, sadness, and less than optimal functionality for the future generations.
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| Stockholm, Sweden flickr.com |
Believe it or not, studies on boredom have been conducted by individuals repulsed by this particular feeling. William James, one of the founders of modern psychology, wrote in 1890, stimulation is the indispensable requisite for pleasure in an experience. In contemporary times, the late University of Toronto psychologist Daniel Berlyne argued, "much of our behaviour is motivated by curiosity alone: the need to slake our incessant thirsts for the new." Mr. Berlyne used a branch of applied mathematics-information theory-as his methodology for studies on how information-seeking is the primary engine for human behavior. Information-seeking is a set binary set of idea, born in the Bell Telephone Company laboratories during the 1940s, designed to comprehend the transmission of signals over the wires.
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| Melbourne, Australia street tram streetblog,org |
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| Amsterdam, Holland, The Netherlands amsterdamsmartcity.org |
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| Berlin, Germany carpet.com |
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| Ermou Street Athens, Greece athensgreece.ca |
This is a question that has long intrigued psychologists, especially after psychologist Donald Hebb's 1962 discovery that rats who lived in more enriched environments were vast more intellectually superior than rats who lived in a more austere environment. The enriched rats were able to complete more complex mazes in shorter times then the spartan rats. The enriched rats's intellectual superiority was later confirmed by studies completed by Mark Rosenzweig at the University of California, Berkeley who concluded that the enriched rats had thicker neocortex with better synaptic connections between brain cells. How does all this apply to urban design?
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| Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York eleghan.com |
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| San Francisco, California sf.streetsblog.org |
Why build a closed off street-level elevation that will bore a pedestrian to tears? Mr. Ellard speculates, "Perhaps the owners of such properties don't see much gain: it hardly seems in the best interests of a major bank to attract a crowd of happy lingerers to the fronts of their buildings, rather than serious customers who get in and get out again." Blogger speculates that another reason is to dissuade vagrants and potential criminal activity. Regardless, a friendly elevation might detract from the more business-like image a bank wants to convey. We want our banks to be places where are assets are carefully monitored in a secure fortress, not the local farmers market. Colin Ellard tells us, "There are other reasons why buildings fall short of our psychological needs. One has to do with a radical shift in architectural design, which entire buildings become signs..."
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| iPhone © 6s theverge.com |
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| Cover to S,M,L,XL O.M.A., Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Maus en.wikipedia.org |
In an age of mass immigration, a mass similarity of cities might inevitable. Cities such as Dubai, where the majority of residents are immigrants, function like airports in which the same shoos are always in the same places. Everything is defined by function, and nothing by history. This can also be liberating.
Or it could be alienating because there is no sense of individual identity for the city. Nothing that makes the city unique. Mr. Koolhaas might be right about the inevitability of generic functional design in the age of globalization. Be that as it may, unless our virtual lives supplant our physical surroundings, universal adoption of generic functional design will have consequences illustrated thus far. Mr. Ellard writes, "Human beings have evolved to operate in environments with optimal levels of complexity related to our biology. We seek out such settings with our eyes, our bodies, our hands and our feet. In turn, the design and appearance of those settings, by affecting our bodies, tap directly into ancient circuits meant to produce responses and emotions that are adaptive." Fundamentally, this keeps us in tune with our surroundings, maintain acceptable states of arousal and alertness, and ultimately allow us to adapt. All this is not possible in a generic functional environment.
One could argue that boredom is a way of modern life and there are even acceptable levels of boredom. When the external world fails to engage us, we turn inward, toward the landscape of the mind. Some would argue that boredom can lead to creativity. Perhaps, it could lead us to use our innate wit and intelligence. However, streetscapes that disregard our need for sensory stimulation contradict our ancient impulses for the new and will ultimately lead to discomfort, sadness, and less than optimal functionality for the future generations.
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