Advance in Environment, Behavior, and Design: Volume 2 PDF
Preview Advance in Environment, Behavior, and Design: Volume 2
Advances in Environment, Behavior, and Design VOLUME 2 EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD IIwin Altman, Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah Michael Brill, BUffalo Organization for Social and Technological Innovation, Buffalo, New York Gary W. Evans (EDRA Board Representative), Program in Social Ecology, University of California, Irvine, California Mark Francis, Department of Environmental Design, University of California, Davis, California M. Powell Lawton, Philadelphia Geriatric Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Robert W. Marans, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan J. Douglas Porteous, Department of Geography, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia Daniel Stokols, Program in Social Ecology, University of California, Irivine, California A Continuation Order Plan is available for this series. A continuation order will bring delivery of each new volume immediately upon publication. Volumes are billed only upon actual shipment. For further information please contact the publisher. Advances in Environment, Behavior, and Design VOLUME 2 Edited by ERVIN H. ZUBE School of Renewable Natural Resources University of Arizona Tucson, Arizona and GARY T. MOORE School of Architecture and Urban Planning University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Milwaukee, Wisconsin Published in cooperation with the Environmental Design Research Association PLENUM PRESS • NEW YORK AND LONDON Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 88-649861 ISBN-13 978-1-4612-8047-7 e-ISBN-13: 978-1-4613-0717-4 001: 1O.IOO7t978-1-4613-0717-4 © 1989 Plenum Press, New York Softcover reprint oft he hardcover 1st edition 1989 A Division of Plenum Publishing Corporation 233 Spring Street, New York, N.Y. 10013 All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical. photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher D Cont ribu tors Tommy Garling, Environmental Psychology Research Unit, Depart ment of Psychology, University of Umea, Umea, Sweden Reginald G. Golledge, Department of Geography, University of Califor nia, Santa Barbara, California Graeme John Hardie, Center for Design Research and Service, School of Design, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina William H. Ittelson, Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona Gerhard Kaminski, Department of Psychology, University of Tiibingen, Tiibingen, Federal Republic of Germany Roderick J. Lawrence, Center for Human Ecology and Environmental Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland Willo Pequegnat, Environmental Design Research Association, Beth esda, Maryland Henry Sanoff, School of Design, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina Herbert W. Schroeder, North Central Forest Experiment Station, U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Chicago, Illinois v vi Contributors Sally A. Shumaker, Behavioral Medicine Branch, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland Francis T. Ventre, College of Architecture and Urban Studies, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia Richard Wener, Environment-Behavior Studies Program, Social Sci ences Department, Polytechnic University, Brooklyn, New York D Preface This second volume in the Advances in Environment, Behavior, and Design series follows the pattern of Volume 1. It is organized into six sections consisting of advances in theory, place research, user group research, sociobehavioral research, research and design methods, and research utilization. The authors of the chapters in this volume represent a range of disciplines, including architecture, geography, psychology, social ecology, and urban planning. They also offer international perspectives: Tommy Garling from Sweden, Graeme Hardie from South Africa (re cently relocated to North Carolina), Gerhard Kaminski from the Federal Republic of Germany, and Roderick Lawrence from Switzerland (for merly from Australia). Although most chapters address topics or issues that are likely to be familiar to readers (environmental perception and cognition, facility pro gramming, and environmental evaluation), four chapters address what the editors perceive to be new topics for environment, behavior, and design research. Herbert Schroeder reports on advances in research on urban for estry. For most of us the term forest probably conjures up visions of dense woodlands in rural or wild settings. Nevertheless, in many parts of the country, urban areas have higher densities of tree coverage than can be found in surrounding rural landscapes. Schroeder reviews re search that addresses the perceived and actual benefits and costs associ ated with these urban forests. Graeme Hardie was invited to write a chapter discussing not only environment-behavior research in developing countries but also the appropriateness of environment-behavior research for developing coun tries. Having worked for many years in developing contexts, he draws on his experience and the research-and-design literature to suggest that environment-behavior issues are not the same in developed and devel oping contexts, nor are methods appropriate for developed contexts vii viii Preface necessarily equally useful in developing countries. He then analyzes a number of issues, including house design, infrastructure planning, pol icy formulation, and fieldwork techniques relying mainly on qualitative methods. Sally Shumaker and Willo Pequegnat started writing a chapter on advances in hospital design from a behavioral perspective. It rapidly became apparent, however, that they were addressing the failure of hospital design to address the needs of health care providers, and of nurses in particular. As a result, the chapter took a new direction when nurses were identified as a special user group within the matrix of en vironment, behavior, and design. Francis Ventre's chapter on research utilization is based on the idea that research utilization involves different epistemological assumptions and different criteria from research itself, namely, those for ensuring efficacy in action and those for substantiating veracity or validity. The basic notion underlying his chapter is that many factors besides system atic research form the basis for design and policy decisions. As he has put it to us, and we agree, research is rarely the single or even the primary basis for environmental decision-making. Rather, research helps to mold the opinion-forming and managerial context within which decisions evolve. Decision-making contexts have been described by so cial scientists examing the policy-making apparatus of governmental agencies and business firms. These studies have been documented in a variety of places, including the journal Knowledge, various Proceedings of the Environmental Design Research Association, and earlier articles by Ventre. In this tradition, rather than reviewing the implications of en vironment-behavior research for policy formulation, Ventre reviews the policy environment in which environment-behavior research resides and attempts to have utility. In Volume 1, we suggested that there are three fundamental orien tations to the field: a pragmatic, social-problem, or environmental-inter vention orientation (represented by sections in each volume on profes sional applications and research utilization); a range of substantive empirical orientations (represented by sections on place research, user group research, and sociobehavioral research); and various theoretical orientations (the lead-in section of each volume). We have adopted a taxonomy of theories that suggests that differ ent small-t theories of environment-behavior phenomena [like Camp bell's (1983) theory of ambient stressors'or Trist, Higgins, Murray, and Pollack's (1963) theory of sociotechnical systems applied to office build ings, and many others], as well as theories of the middle range (Merton, Preface ix 1957) can be conceptualized in terms of their underlying philosophical presuppositions, unit of analysis, and locus of control of behavior, or, said more broadly, in terms of their underlying ontological, epis temological, and methodological presuppositions (Moore, 1987). To continue this analysis, we have again invited leading theoreti cians in the field, this time coming from European intellectual traditions, to bring us up to date on the latest advances in two more theoretical directions. In his chapter on ecological conceptualizations, Gerhard Ka minski from Tiibingen discusses the theory deficit in the field and then analyzes Barker's ecobehavioral and Gibson's ecological optic perspec tives and highlights their most recent contributions and develop ments-especially those of the Barker school-along with unresolved issues. He also raises many issues about theory development in the environment-behavior research-and-design field in general and hints at a set of meta theoretical principles for future theory development. Roderick Lawrence from Geneva analyzes structuralist theories, dis tinguishing between global and analytic structuralism and between the cognitive and Marxist structuralist perspectives, and then shows the application to analysis of the syntax and meaning of the built environ ment. He makes the structural analysis of space his central concern as seen from the points of view of a range of structural orientations, finally highlighting dialectical structuralism by reference to the analysis of housing in Australia and England. Both of these chapters are complex and demanding; they assume close familiarity with the basic works of Barker and Gibson in the first case and of Levi-Strauss and perhaps Castells in the second case. William Ittelson concludes the section with a discussion of folk and scientific theories and raises provocative ques tions about their relationship, the role of theory in explaining versus "making contact with" the phenomena of everyday environmental ex perience, and the possible inappropriateness of verification and falsifica- tion as applied to theories of environment, behavior, and design. ' The editors have again shared equally in the organization and con tent of this volume, and each has been the senior editor for half the chapters. In the preparation, we were assisted by many people. We would like to acknowledge the following people, who helped with re views of chapter drafts: Linda Groat, Paul Maas, Ryuzo Ohno in Japan, Michael O'Neill, Harvey Rabinowitz, and Amos Rapoport, and our Edi torial Advisory Board, who have continued to be a great source of sup port and advice on the directions for this and future volumes. The Plen um staff have again been a joy to work with, and we appreciate their assistance, especially Eliot Werner, Senior Editor and our chief adviser,
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