Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Several theoretic and environmental psychological models establish a connection between the environment and the reactions of humans and the research support that there is a mutual influence between individual, environmental and behavioral factors. You often assume that a person both can influence and be influenced by the surrounding environment. This is evident, but it is less obvious how a given physical design influence people’s immediate behavior in the city. The aim of this study was to investigate if the physical design of a place influences people in an urban environment and to investigate how the behavior is influenced. Three public places were chosen to take part of the investigation. The three places have a similar function, but differ in design, scale, age etc. Based on the three places I could characterize behaviors for each separate place and detect differences and similarities. I used observation with full participation with a semi-formal/semi-informal data collection as my method. I was at the places during 1, 5 hours/day during the three months that had been given as a frame for the implementation of the study. The result shows that there are pronounced differences between the places in some respects and that the places in other respects are similar. The differences are to the largest part about age-distribution, distribution between necessary-, elective- and social activities, time spent at the place and formality/informality. I further discuss that the results are hard to ascribe the physical design directly, since the behavior did not occur isolated from several other influencing factors. I also discuss the possibilities to generalize the study. This essay was set up as an independent writing, at an advanced level, at the LTJ-faculty SLU, during the spring semester in 2011.