Rethinking the Psychology of Place: Being Here - Paperback

by David Canter (Author)

Rethinking the Psychology of Place presents a new approach to Professor David Canter's 1977 Psychology of Place. Providing a unified Theory of Place relevant to human transactions with buildings, cities and nature, the book weaves together psychological, architectural and social perspectives to demonstrate that place is a dynamic phenomenon emerging from embodied experience, memory and social interactions. Central to this are 'place rules' and 'environmental roles' that mediate how individuals relate to and behave within locations, challenging deterministic notions that design directly causes place experiences.

Supported by over 160 illustrations, the book advances a nuanced, human-centred understanding of place an evolving, dynamic nexus of action, meaning and form by:

• Examining the home as an emotionally layered construct central to experiences of place
• Positioning architecture as a filter of sensory input and a vehicle of symbolic meaning, shaped by cultural templates, architectural styles and building types
• Using techniques such as space syntax to illustrate how spatial arrangements facilitate human interactions at both the building and metropolitan scale
• Critiquing modernist architecture's abstraction of meaning
• Highlighting streets as vital, participatory spaces, while considering how digital culture reshapes how we are present in these environments
• Challenging dominant biocentric explanations for the restorative benefits of nature and related explorations of preferences for landscapes and place attachment, offering an alternative that emphasises human agency, culture and context

By integrating concepts such as place attachment, domocentricity and environmental roles, this book will appeal to students and researchers in environmental psychology, architecture, landscape design, urban planning and environmental sociology, as well as the general reader looking to understand our interactions with our surroundings. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the complex relationships between people and their built and natural environments.

Author Biography

David Canter, PhD (Psychology), PhD (Music Composition), is Emeritus Professor at the University of Liverpool, UK. He established the first graduate program in Environmental Psychology at the University of Surrey, UK in 1973. He has published a number of related books, including Psychology for Architects, Environmental Interaction, Architectural Psychology, Designing for Therapeutic Environments, Football in its Place and Readings on the Psychology of Place. The 1977 Psychology of Place continues to garner thousands of citations. He is also internationally acclaimed for his work in Criminal Psychology, creating the field of Investigative Psychology, the origin of which is described in his award winning Criminal Shadows. The television series, combining his expertise in environmental psychology and investigative psychology, Mapping Murder, which he wrote and presented has been widely broadcast, giving rise to a popular book of the same name. In addition to his scholarly activities, radio and television broadcasts and popular blogs he has consulted with major architectural firms and blue-chip companies and provided evidence in court and to government enquiries.