Episode 1 – Musicians for urban planning: valuing the subconscious individual experiences in the city

Much of the way we design cities and develop urban dynamics is heavily reliant on assumptions regarding the movement of larger groups of people, transport, and cars. While these strategies have resulted in functional cities, they often do not reflect the needs of individuals. There are many ways in which our current urban design practices fail to account for the impact of the city on the health and well-being of the population. For example, inadequate living conditions and differences in access to space across socio-economic areas, insufficient quality and access to green spaces, exposure to noise pollution, urban heat islands, and a lack of spaces for walking, cycling, and restorative activities all contribute to a less healthy urban environment. To create cities that are more sympathetic to the health of every individual, we still need to develop a deeper and more complex understanding of the experiences at a micro-level and the different conscious and subconscious processes of perception.

In order to understand these interactions, PEARL (Person Environment Activity Research Laboratory) at UCL, London, is a one-of-a-kind research facility that creates life-sized environments such as town squares, railway stations, or high streets and manipulates various environmental factors, such as sound, light, and scents, to investigate how individuals perceive and interact with their surroundings.

The PEARL facility

In this episode, Professor Nick Tyler explores:

• how the PEARL research supports the understanding of pedestrian/walker needs in the city
• what we know of how individuals interact with their everyday environments from an evolutionary perspective
• how this knowledge may be used to gain insights for an urban planning transformation.