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"As it happens, we understand very little about how human beings interact emotionally and physiologically with the world around us. This is beginning to change. The collection of essays in this recent book on Urban Experience and Design describes various studies ranging from biometric monitoring to way-finding surveys, providing unique insight into our cognitive processing of environmental stimuli… Taken together these contributions could indeed inform a new paradigm for the design professions."

Woodworth, A.V. (n.d.). BOOK REVIEW: URBAN EXPERIENCE AND DESIGN: CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES ON IMPROVING THE PUBLIC REALM, EDITED BY Justin B. Hollander and Ann Sussman. New Design Ideas, Vol.5, No.2, 2021, pp.224-226

"Urban Experience and Design: Contemporary Perspectives on Improving the Public can be a useful source for scholars and students looking to introduce the topics of biophilic design and designing healthier buildings and urban spaces. Section I can best serve students as an introduction to urban planning and design concepts and theoretical foundations, as well as point to the future of potential research."

Henry Hildebrandt (2022) Urban experience and design: Contemporary perspectives on improving the public realm, edited by Justin B. Hollander and Ann Sussman, Journal of Urban Affairs, 44:3, 440-442, DOI: 10.1080/07352166.2021.1955599

"The editors and authors tell us that architecture and urban design must give people what they want, what they are comfortable with and what evolution has primed them to seek and appreciate. That message is likely to be received with some ambivalence in most schools of environmental design and in many professional associations… the editors and their collaborators rightly tell us that designers and planners stand to benefit from new biometric methods. A better understanding of the human mind, visual perception and user behaviour can only help. In the hands of a skilful designer, it can add to the complexity and contradiction that makes good architecture great."

Raphaël Fischler (2021) Urban experience and design contemporary perspectives on improving the public realm, Journal of Urban Design, 26:5, 651-652, DOI: 10.1080/13574809.2021.1956710

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"As it happens, we understand very little about how human beings interact emotionally and physiologically with the world around us. This is beginning to change. The collection of essays in this recent book on Urban Experience and Design describes various studies ranging from biometric monitoring to way-finding surveys, providing unique insight into our cognitive processing of environmental stimuli… Taken together these contributions could indeed inform a new paradigm for the design professions."

Woodworth, A.V. (n.d.). BOOK REVIEW: URBAN EXPERIENCE AND DESIGN: CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES ON IMPROVING THE PUBLIC REALM, EDITED BY Justin B. Hollander and Ann Sussman. New Design Ideas, Vol.5, No.2, 2021, pp.224-226

"Urban Experience and Design: Contemporary Perspectives on Improving the Public can be a useful source for scholars and students looking to introduce the topics of biophilic design and designing healthier buildings and urban spaces. Section I can best serve students as an introduction to urban planning and design concepts and theoretical foundations, as well as point to the future of potential research."

Henry Hildebrandt (2022) Urban experience and design: Contemporary perspectives on improving the public realm, edited by Justin B. Hollander and Ann Sussman, Journal of Urban Affairs, 44:3, 440-442, DOI: 10.1080/07352166.2021.1955599

"The editors and authors tell us that architecture and urban design must give people what they want, what they are comfortable with and what evolution has primed them to seek and appreciate. That message is likely to be received with some ambivalence in most schools of environmental design and in many professional associations… the editors and their collaborators rightly tell us that designers and planners stand to benefit from new biometric methods. A better understanding of the human mind, visual perception and user behaviour can only help. In the hands of a skilful designer, it can add to the complexity and contradiction that makes good architecture great."

Raphaël Fischler (2021) Urban experience and design contemporary perspectives on improving the public realm, Journal of Urban Design, 26:5, 651-652, DOI: 10.1080/13574809.2021.1956710

Urban Experience and Design features essays from the UK, the US, the Netherlands, France, and Iran that examine ways to create better design, health, and community welfare by applying cognitive science and evidence-based metrics to urban planning. Analyzed through the lens of environmental psychology and cognitive studies, the contributors emphasize the significance of user experience, emotional response, space perception, and behavior in environments. Experiments on human experience in the built environment that measure unconscious behavioral responses to stimuli are studied with contemporary eye-tracking analysis, heat maps, and modeling software. The authors comprehensively analyze people's sense of place, attachment, identity with a place, and place makers. Brain research and cognitive analysis validate results. The title includes a commentary on the founders of modernism associating social science understanding with hidden human experience and the unconsciousness storehouse of stressful experiences. Buildings undoubtedly have an emotional impact, and designers are challenged to make human-centered connections with nature and promote well-being. Overall, the title provides evidenced-based studies measuring human responses to urban settings shaping human interactions.

--S. D. Scott-Fundling, Savannah College of Art and Design

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