• How neuroscience informs architecture and urban design

    A new book covers an emerging field that provides data on human responses to places, leading to new theories on community design.
    Urban Experience and Design: Contemporary Perspectives on Improving the Public Realm , edited by Justin B. Hollander and Ann Sussman, is a collection of academic and scientific papers on cognitive research and community design. The book covers a lot of ground and is not easy to summarize, but it...Read more
  • People enjoying a walkable street

    Preference for walkable communities strong, but young families want a bigger home

    Living in a walkable community correlates to a significantly stronger reported quality of life—and that metric rose during the COVID 19 pandemic, according to a biennial poll on housing and transportation by the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Less favorably for urbanists, two generations...Read more

  • The grid makes a comeback

    An analysis of US street networks since 1940 shows plunging connectivity in the last half of the 20th Century, followed by a sharp reversal of that trend in the new millennium.
    Since 2000, connected street networks have made a comeback, according to a University of Southern California analysis of US streets over the past century. “Since 2000, the grid index and its components have risen back to levels not seen since the mid-20th Century,” notes Geoff Boeing, assistant...Read more

  • Is public architecture dysfunctional?

    A new poll shows that Americans prefer traditional architecture to later modern styles in public buildings, and researchers are finding explanations in neuroscience.
    Americans prefer traditional architecture over modernist architecture by a nearly three to one in a recent national poll . The Harris Poll survey called “Americans’ Preferred Architecture for Federal Buildings,” sponsored by National Civic Art Society Survey, was released this month. The preference...Read more