ancient cities

254 Environmental Psychology
healing. In public housing, views of nature have
been associated with greater attention capacity
and more effective life problem solving. “Nearby
nature” in the form of gardens, street trees, and
urban parks appears to increase environmental
satisfaction and residential attachment. Urban
green spaces also seem to attract social interaction,
children’s play, and use for physical
activity. Hospitals and other health care settings
sometimes incorporate “healing gardens” to calm
both patients and health care professionals as
well as to improve moods and increase perspective
on problems. Despite these encouraging
findings, the evidence base in the area of restorative
environments is relatively thin and the theoretical
explanation of restorative environments
leaves many gaps.
Significant Areas of Study
Environmental psychologists have made particular
contributions to the study of child development
and child-friendly environments and environments
for the elderly and those with disabilities.
Environmental psychologists help design and evaluate
schools, playgrounds, residential facilities for
the elderly and disabled, health care facilities, workplaces,
and jails. They work with urban designers
and planners, as well as landscape designers, to
apply their concepts and interventions to neighborhoods
and whole cities. For example, environmental
psychologists in many countries participate in
the Healthy Cities movement.
Research and interventions on environmental
sustainability runs a wide gamut from behavior
modification interventions to participatory community
research and action. Some of the most
sophisticated contributions have been around the
issue of how the meaning and social organization
of places change during disasters and their aftermath,
and in the face of toxic hazards. These
analyses are used to develop policies and practices
that facilitate greater cooperation and trust in
programs to manage hazards and recovery and to
make these programs more responsive to the experiences
of residents.
The interdisciplinary fields of urban studies and
environmental psychology overlap in that both
study neighborhoods and cities. Environmental
psychologists have made important contributions
in the area of community development, urban
housing, assessments of the quality of the built
environment, the relationship between the condition
and uses of urban environments and crime,
and the meanings of urban environments to residents.
Both areas grapple with how spaces are
produced, used, and understood. The theoretical
debates common to all disciplines concerned with
space and society occur in environmental psychology
as well. As in urban planning, these debates
have implications for practice as well as for
research. Important journals that publish articles
advancing knowledge in areas of shared interest
include Environment and Behavior and the Journal
of Environmental Psychology.
Susan Saegert
See also Simmel, Georg; Urban Design; Urban Psychology
Further Readings
Altman, Irwin and Setha M. Low. 1992. Place
Attachment. New York: Plenum Press.
Bartlett, Sherrie, Roger Hart, David Satterthwaite,
Xemena de la Barra, and Alfredo Missair. 1999.
Cities for Children: Children’s Rights, Poverty and
Urban Management. New York: UNICEF, and
London: Earthscan.
Bechtel, Robert B. and Arza Churchman. 2002.
Handbook of Environmental Psychology. New York:
Wiley.
Cooper-Marcus, Clare and Marnie Barnes. 1999. Healing
Gardens: Therapeutic Benefits and Design
Recommendations. New York: Wiley.
Evans, Gary W. 2006. “Child Development and the
Physical Environment.” Annual Review of Psychology
57:423–51.
Evans, Gary W., Gunn Johansson, and Leif Rystedt.
1999. “Hassles on the Job: A Study of a Job
Intervention with Urban Bus Drivers.” Journal of
Organizational Behavior 20(2):199–209.
Gibson, James J. 1979. The Ecology of Visual Perception.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Heft, Harry. 2001. Ecological Psychology in Context:
James Gibson, Roger Barker, and the Legacy of
William James’s Radical Empiricism. Mahwah, NJ:
Erlbaum.
Saegert, Susan and Gary H. Winkel. 1990.
“Environmental Psychology.” Annual Review of
Psychology 41:441–77.