This research examines the overlooked phenomenon of first impressions between strangers in urban and psychological research. These rapid social judgments have a significant impact on potential future ...relations and contribute to a sense of welcomeness and belonging in communities. They occur abundantly in urban transitory spaces such as streets, malls, public squares, park(let)s and other in-between arenas where we frequently encounter strangers. This study formed and tested a theoretical hypothesis about how the composition of such spaces affects first impressions through survey-experiment and causal-comparative analysis. The discussion highlights and introduces the relevance of first impressions to urban discourse while offering a pathway to spatially investigate them. The findings have implications for convivial design and psychological research.
A crisis in mental health, especially in economically deprived neighbourhoods, can present a significant barrier to successful urban regeneration projects. It follows that urban regeneration not only ...has a stake in promoting mental health care generally but, through its place making influence on physical and social structures, has a more direct responsibility to address poor mental health and sustain well-being where it exists. In support of a psychologically informed urban regeneration, this Special Issue sets out the case for a systematised intellectual and practice-based discipline and movement: an urban psychology, with an explicit therapeutic mission. It incorporates 10 articles delivered initially at Europe’s first urban psychology summit — City, Psychology, Place — held at the University of Liverpool in London campus in June 2019. In this editorial introduction, we reflect upon the need for an urban psychology at this historical juncture and offer our views on the work which such a body of practical knowledge might do to improve regeneration and renewal outcomes. We conclude that there can be no enduring economic, social or physical regeneration of distressed, failing or failed communities unless there is first ‘regeneration in support of life itself’ (RISLI).
Does It Matter Where We Live? Park, Nansook; Peterson, Christopher
The American psychologist,
09/2010, Letnik:
65, Številka:
6
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Psychology has neglected the study of variation across cities. An urban psychology is needed that takes seriously such variation and focuses on strengths and assets contributing to the good life as ...much as on problems of urbanization. To illustrate the value of an urban psychology, we describe studies of character strengths among residents in the 50 largest U.S. cities (N = 47,369). Differences in character strengths were found to exist across cities, were robustly related to important city-level outcomes such as entrepreneurship and 2008 presidential election voting, and were associated in theoretically predicted ways with city-level features. We propose a framework that distinguishes between strengths of the "head," which are intellectual and self-oriented, and strengths of the "heart," which are emotional and interpersonal. Cities whose residents had higher levels of head strengths were those rated as creative and innovative. Head strengths predicted the likelihood of a city voting for Barack Obama, whereas heart strengths predicted voting for John McCain. More than half of the world's population now resides in cities, and urban psychology deserves greater attention.
Urbanizing social-ecological systems often experience environmental degradation, especially in the Global South. Traditional urban psychology has attributed this to decreasing environmental concern ...due to weakening connections to nature. However, urban psychological research has barely considered how predictions may improve when including psychological complexity, exemplified by context, in the urbanization-concern link. In this work, we test for sensitivity of a loss of nature connection to cultural context, for substitution by additional southern urban features, and for the emergence of aggregate preferences based on the feedback between these mediators in regard to the overall relationship. Our structural equations model is calibrated using original survey data from the globalized southern megacity Bangalore, India. The spatial explicitness of our data allows for representative sampling from its rich urban variation. Spatial lags of exogenous variables provide instrumental variables to control for endogeneity arising from feedback. The results suggest that modernization-induced value change is the main policy leverage that facilitates pro-environmental preferences within a uniquely Indian interplay of various urban psychological effects.
This research related five attachment objects all together, i.e. home attachment, neighborhood cohesion, workplace/campus attachment, city attachment, and national identity, with general ...pro-environmental behavior. Additional analysis included prejudice toward pro-environmental activists and psycho-socio-demographic profiles as explanatory variables. The participants were 262 urban young adults (121 males, 141 females; Mage = 30.09 years, SDage = 9.82 years) who are citizens of Jakarta and its surrounding areas. The result showed that the higher the attachment to, consecutively, workplace/campus, city, and neighborhood, the higher the general pro-environmental behavior. Home attachment, national identity, and prejudice toward pro-environmental activists could not predict pro- environmental behavior.
Urban tourism has gained much significance recently, and is especially important for the countries with underdeveloped tourism offers. The demand for its forms in which the main source of information ...about the city are local residents has also increased. This is why it is important to study the ways in which the inhabitants experience the environment they live in. Hence, this research concerns the local inhabitants' experiences of the Novi Sad pedestrian zone, the most attractive part of the city. The goal of the research is to present their different experiences and constructs they use to describe and evaluate it. Since there are no previous attempts to gain insight into it, the approach to the subject is qualitative and exploratory. 22 residents (21-63 years of age) were interviewed and were assigned to elicit constructs. The research gave an insight into a spectrum of different experiences of the whole pedestrian zone, as well as its many parts and aspects. The inhabitants elicited many constructs which they use to describe and evaluate it, some of which are similar to the ones found in other parts of the world, while others are specific for Novi Sad. The results provide guidelines for urban and cultural development of the city.
La inseguridad ciudadana y el miedo al delito son uno de los tópicos de investigación más frecuentes en la literatura actual sobre estudios urbanos. La abundancia de estudios empíricos exige una ...reflexión teórica profunda que abra nuevas vías de trabajo e integre los resultados que parecen aceptados entre la comunidad de investigadores. En este artículo, expondremos seis hipótesis o marcos teóricos que podrían resultar relevantes para este fin. Acudo a la teoría social urbana en busca de ideas, desde los autores clásicos del siglo XIX hasta las nuevas propuestas narrativas posmodernas. La conclusión apunta hacia el mayor potencial de los marcos ecológico y narrativo.
Urban living can be polluted, crime-ridden and isolating, or it can be community-oriented, aesthetically pleasing and safe. The psychological needs of urban dwellers should be considered when ...planning environmentally sustainable cities; after all, cities will only be successful if residents want to live in them. This chapter discusses factors that lead residents to be satisfied and attached to their communities. These factors primarily include individual differences among residents and the needs for pleasant areas, security and social interaction. Many urban design features, such as green spaces, are good for both environmental sustainability and city residents, whereas others, such as elevated density, can have mixed outcomes.
The galloping urbanization of the world simultaneously transforms human society into a thoroughly urban society and dismantles the traditional “rural–urban” dichotomy. It is increasingly recognized ...in urban studies that human spatiality entails a complex pattern of settlements and dwellings. I propose a developmental-experiential theoretical framework for addressing what Stanley Milgram called the experience of living in cities. This framework particularly focuses on the atmosphere of living in cities. Founded on organismic-developmental axiomatic base introduced by Jacob von Uexküll, Heinz Werner, and Bernard Kaplan, and developed as cultural-developmental approach by Jaan Valsiner, the proposed framework centers on the experience of individual organismic relating to spatial environment. I draw on the work of Manuel Castells, Edward Soja, and Yi-Fu Tuan to conceptualize the emergence of meaningful places as the outcome of experiencing space. The concept of encounter introduced by Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift is used to locate the experience of the banal, everyday city life. Following Erving Goffman, the central question for the framework becomes the question of organization of experience. This question is tackled through Jaan Valsiner's notions of semiotic mediation and regulation. I specifically focus on spatial signs that humans use to regulate the meaning-making process that creates as meaningful what Georges Perec called species of spaces, such as towns and cities. “The city,” from this standpoint, becomes one of the most important signs that mediate and regulate our experience of environments we inhabit. I discuss a number of theoretical and methodological directions in which this framework could be further developed to revive the urban, or settlement, psychology, which failed to develop as a viable subdiscipline despite the proposals of Georg Simmel and Nikolai Antsiferov in the early twentieth century, and the latter proposals of Milgram. This discipline should join efforts with settlement sociology and settlement geography to tackle the multiple challenges of urbanization by exploring its experiential dimension in its fascinating cultural diversity and intra- and interindividual variation.
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