ancient cities

capacities for behavior and the social-historical
nature of the material environment. For culturally
competent members of the United States, a mailbox
affords posting a letter. Gibson rejects the idea
that there is a little man in the head who must take
in information about the environment, represent it
or process it, and then act. He places perception in
a continuous process of moving, looking, seeking,
correcting errors in which learning is not a matter
of internalizing contingencies in the environment
but rather of increasingly skilled pickup of information
that resides in the environment.
Behavior Mapping
Numerous standardized methods have been
developed to record human behavior in environments
ranging from systematic observation of
target individuals across environments through
multiple approaches to recording the range of
people and activities in a particular environment
over time. This method has been useful in assessing
the efficacy of interventions to increase variety and
frequency of use of environments ranging from
urban playgrounds and plazas through dayrooms
in big city mental hospitals. In one well-known
study, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces,
William H. Whyte used time-lapse photography to
study how people use the sidewalks, plazas, and
parks of New York City.
Behavior Setting Theory
Roger Barker developed the theory of behavior
settings through naturalistic observation of children
in their daily lives. He concluded that the
behavior of one child in different settings varied
more than the behavior of different children in the
same setting. This led to the theory that there were
“quasi-stable” person–environment units organized
temporally and spatially (such as classes,
bridge clubs, and coffee shops) that regulated the
behavior of inhabitants in predictable ways through
“programs” that organize the behavior of participants
in coordination with the temporal and
physical environment. These programs also enforce
goals and norms. Alan Wicker, Barker’s student,
later modified the theory to (1) contextualize
behavior in relationships within broader institutional
and societal systems; (2) elaborate the role
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of specific individuals over the life course of behavior
settings, especially during founding of the settings;
and (3) use multiple methods. Behavior
setting studies often reveal that the settings and
programs actually existing within an organization
are at odds with the ostensible mission of the organization,
as when hospitals organize spaces and
operating procedures to facilitate staff coping with
the volume of patients in ways that interfere with
patient care.
Cognitive Mapping
Cognitive maps are psychological representations
of environments that guide way finding and
affect the quality of experience in them. Urban
planner Kevin Lynch and psychologist Edward
Tolman both developed this concept though they
viewed it very differently. For Lynch, the “image
of the city” was conveyed by the legibility of its
paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks. For
Tolman, cognitive maps arose in the brain through
learning about how desires and needs could be
satisfied in different places. Both approaches continue
to be employed in efforts to make environments
easier to navigate and more satisfying to
inhabit. Later researchers differentiated the cognitive
maps formed by social groups: people with
different levels of visual, auditory, and cognitive
capacities and developmental ages. Some study
cognitive maps as products of cultural and media
representations and socioeconomic and political
regulation.
Environmental Meaning and Perception
Environmental psychologists use theories ranging
from perception psychology to discourse theory,
and Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of “habitus” to
understand the behavioral, affective, and symbolic
meaning of environments for people using a range
of methods, including physiological measurement,
behavioral and cognitive mapping, interviews, psychoanalytic
techniques, visual recording, narratives,
and ethnographies. Thus they have described
the multiplicity of meanings and perceptions of
urban plazas, community gardens, playgrounds,
and inner-city neighborhoods that guide use of
space, reinforce or challenge group identities, and
promote conflict or tolerance among inhabitants