Please sit with your group

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Please sit with your group
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Urban Environments
Exploring person-environment relations in cities,
neighborhoods, and public places
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LIFE IN THE BIG CITY
Is it good? . . . or bad?
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Growth in population in New York City

• 1800 79,000
• 1820 152,000
• 1840 391,000
• 1860 1,175,000
• 1880 1,912,000
• 1900 3,437,000
• 1920 5,621,000

• 1940 7,455,000
• 1960 7,782,000
• 1980 7,072,000
• 2000 8,008,000

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When moving from a small town/village to the big
city, what are the big adjustments that you need
to make?
Anonymity
Less consensus about social norms
Stimulus overload
Rate of change
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LIFE IN THE BIG CITY

• Positives
• Its a carnival!
• More resources (cultural, educational, leisure,
  etc)
• More job opportunities

• Negatives
• Loosening of social norms (crime, etc)
• Problems from higher density (traffic, noise,
  pollution)

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Neighborhoods - the building blocks of cities

• While people physically live in cities, their
  sense of attachment is typically to a local area
  a neighborhood.
• Neighborhood is a psychological concept they
  dont necessarily match legal or political
  boundaries.

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What is a neighborhood?

• Many attempts at definition
• ask residents to draw maps consensus?
• use of arbitrary divisions

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Hartfords 17 Neighborhoods
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Census Maps

• Blocks (individual blocks 101, 102, etc.)
• Block Groups (combinations of blocks 100s,
  200s, etc.)
• Tract (combinations of block groups)

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Neighborhood as an elementary school district
(Warren Warren,1977)

• chose elementary school district as definition of
  neighborhood
• clear boundaries
• walkable
• usually 2500-5000 persons

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Classification of Neighborhoods

• Warren Warren used 3 dimensions
• Identity area had clear sense of identity as
  a neighborhood (name).
• Interaction level of face-to-face interaction
  between neighbors.
• Linkages connection of individuals to others
  beyond the neighborhood.

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Neighborhood Type Identity
Interaction Linkages
Integral
Parochial
- Diffuse -
- Stepping Stone -
Transitory - -
Anomic - - -
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Group Discussion Questions

• Identify the types of neighborhoods described in
  the vignettes.
• What kind of neighborhood do you think you live
  in? Why?

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Neighborhood satisfaction has been linked to . .
.

• Satisfaction with the community as a whole
• Psychological well-being
• Life satisfaction

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What contributes to neighborhood satisfaction?

• Personal factors
• Physical influences
• Social Influences

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Personal Factors

• People need to adapt to the level of stimulation
  a neighborhood provides.
• Property ownership people who own property are
  generally more satisfied than those who rent.

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Physical Influences

• Aesthetics
• -- building mix (mix of residential
  commercial)
• -- green space (trees, lawns, places to walk)
• -- open views
• -- physically well-maintained (lawns cut, no
  trash)
• Noise (unwanted sound)
• -- particularly annoying to suburban residents

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Social Influences
Social Interaction
social interaction
neighborhood satisfaction
physical features

• Safety concerns/fear of crime
• fear of crime not closely related to
  actual crime rate

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Thought question

• Are streets empty because they are dangerous?
• or . . .

Are they dangerous because they are empty?
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Defensible Space proponents would . . .

• Say theyre dangerous because they are empty! (no
  natural surveillance)
• Advocate physical changes that
• reduce through traffic by strangers
• increase natural surveillance by residents

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Creating Defensible space
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Temperature and Social Disorder

• 1960s urban riots
• U.S. Riot Commission noted correlation between
  temperature and riots
• FBI lists climate as a variable in explaining
  incidence of crime

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Temperature and Social Disorder

• Lots of studies on violent crime rates
  temperature
• Most find positive correlation between
  aggression temperature
• Some other findings
• More baseball players hit with wild pitches
  as temperature increases
• Drivers blow their horns more often at
  temperatures above 85o F

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Everyday behaviors in the community

• Watching
• Walking
• Hanging Out

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Watching the world go by

• 3 modes of watching (Appleyard)
• (1) receptive mode -- noting the world around
  us
• in a passive, receptive way. See people
  and
• things as a sensory experience, almost
  as a
• form of entertainment or recreation.

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Watching the world go by
(2) operative mode looking at the world in a
problem-solving way purposeful attention.

• (3) inferential mode looking at the social
  meaning
• of the things we see.

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Walking

• Do people stroll in small towns and march in the
  metropolis??
• Yes! Walking speed (on average) appears to be
  related to the size of the community
• Velocity .86 log P (population) .05 New
  Britain population 70,010
• V .86 (4.845) .05 3.907 feet/sec 2.66 mph

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Walking

• When walking, women and children take more
  complex routes than adult men, usually to see
  some physical feature of the neighborhood.
• People generally minimize eye contact with
  strangers, particularly in cities.

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Hanging Out

• Young people like to hang out in the
• fourth environment anywhere except
• home, playgrounds and other places meant
• for kids.
• Between ages 13-18, where did you hang
• out? How did it change with age?

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The Environmental Psychology of Shopping (the
ecology of your local supermarket)

• In just about any grocery store, where is the
  milk and bread located? Why?
• Why do the aisles tend to be long rather than
  short?
• At which shelf level, and at what part of the
  aisle
• are items most likely to attract your
  attention?
• Where do you find single packs of gum, candy,
  etc?