Considerations: Social and

Psychological
 Social and Psychological Considerations

 Good planning and design will be the product of a process which respects both nature of man
and the nature of nature --Elizabeth Kassler. Thus far we have emphasized the natural
constraints in regional landscape planning and site planning. The criteria for housing,
recreation facilities, and use areas have assumed a great deal about the nature of man. In this
research we consider how social and psychological theory may present constraints or positive
direction in decision making and the development of form at all scales of landscape
architecture.
 Only recently has there been a concerted effort to relate an understanding of human
needs, environmental perception and attitudes to design and planning in the hope of
providing more satisfactory, conflict-free, and socially appropriate environments.
Environmental psychology has become almost as popular a subject as ecology.
  Site Values/ Social Impact
 It seems likely that an understanding of behavior and perception will be helpful in the
development of answers to the following similar questions. What kind of setting is considered
suitable for various forms of recreation and leisure time behavior? Which aspects of recreation
are derived from a desire to get away from pressure of the city and which are derived from a
need for physical exercise? How can playgrounds be made responsive to the needs, urges and
feelings of young children when they are designed by adults? The answers to such questions
and others are obviously important if design and planning are to be responsive to the social
context within which the design must operate and which it serves.
 Generally there are two basic ways to become more sensitive to the answers to these and
a host of similar questions on every aspect of behavior and environment. One is to learn from
observation and direct consultation with members of community or a specific group on society
defined by factors such as age and socioeconomic status. Another way is to become familiar
with the general principles or “universals” of behavior and perception.
SOCIAL ANALYSIS

 Various methods have been developed to help designers know more about the needs and
attitudes of the public client. One method of gathering attitudinal information is the
questionnaire or attitude survey. The success of these forms depends on the selection and
wording of questions. Questions such as “what do you think of so and so?” or “what kind
of environment would you like?” are inhibiting. Since most members of the public do not
know what all the possibilities are, their answers are limited by their past experiences and
imaginations, or loaded by the choices they are given in the questions. Although attitude
surveys are becoming increasingly sophisticated, there are so many variables and
difficulties that they may only be useful as a ways to substantiate the hypothesis or
intuitive guess of an intelligent designer or planner who is familiar with the situation.
 Behavior Settings
The interaction between human behavior and the nonhuman environment is a
two-way process. On the one hand, the environment has a definite impact on the
individual, and our response may be adapt to the imposed conditions. On the other
hand, we are continually manipulating or choosing our physical surroundings in any
attempt to make a life physically and psychologically more comfortable.
Behavior is the result of a complex interaction between two main sets of
variables. The first is the environment that surrounds and affects the individual. The
second is the inner condition of the individual, which has two parts: psychological,
related to the body’s biological mechanisms, and psychological, related to the
cultural background, motives, and experiences of the individual and his basic needs.
Thus in design we are concerned with three categories of human factors: physical,
physiological, and psychological.
Three categories of Human
Factors
1. PHYSICAL FACTORS
 Analysis of average measurements and postures, movement, and growth results in a set of
dimensions for parts of building and detailed landscape design. A door must be high
enough to allow people to pass through without stooping, seats must be at the right level
and inclination to be comfortable etc. Design details derived from purely visual
considerations may or may not fulfill the condition fit for user. Le Corbusier’s modular
system derived a set of visually pleasing proportions and dimensions from the human
body, thereby theoretically relating beauty and functional satisfaction in his design.
Special situations may logically result in deviation from usual dimensions and standard.
Example, when young children are involved, the environment must facilitate growth and
development.
2. PHYSIOLOGICAL FACTORS
 Human physiological needs are also relatively easy to specify. They result from interaction of the
inner biological condition of an individual with the surrounding environment. People need food,
water, air, exercise and protection. A state of heath or disease may be regarded as an expression of
the success or failure of an organism to respond adaptively to the environment changes. The
process by which the individual maintain its internal environment in an approximately permanent
state is homeostasis. This process is innate and automatic, resulting in the operation of body
mechanism and glands. Perspiring, shivering and sleeping are examples of the body’s response to
the environmental conditions.
 Need can be fulfilled through the provision of nutritious food, clean air, adequate and pure water,
in addition to the elimination of disease with the effective physical environment which allow for
control of cold and heat. A human comfort zone in which maximum and minimum temperatures
and humidity are specified has been developed by Olgay, suggesting an optimum environment in
terms of the homeostatic process, human comfort, and ease of living. A semi-physiological need is
the need for self-preservation and avoidance of pain. It is a self-protecting device against physical
injury and death. The responsibility of city agencies to provide conditions of safety for citizens has
resulted in a series of regulations related and design specifications to our need for security and fear
of injury through falling.
3. PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS
 Health is not merely the absence of disease or infirmity .The definition adopted by the World
Health Organization describes heath as a state of physical, mental, and social well being. Thus
we come to the third human component component in the environmental design: human
psychological and social needs, behavioral patterns and tendencies. It is the most difficult of the
three sets of human factors to define and relate to the form of the environment.
 Human psychological needs and perception of the environment differ according to a
multitude of variables including age, social class, and cultural background, past experience and
motives, and daily routine of the individual. These factors influence and differentiate the need
structures of individuals and groups. Even if the same need is identified, the overt behavior is
likely to be different. Despite the complexity of the variables and difficulties in the definition of
many needs, it is possible to suggest certain broad categories of inner needs defined on the
basis of observed behavior and empirical evidence and social analysis. Some psychological are
stronger than the others, and our need structure changes according to the particular situation.
 The basic human inner condition may be classified into five generalized groupings of
motivational forces and psychological needs:

 Social
 Stabilizing
 Individual
 Self-expression
 Enrichment
Social

 The first group of social needs, includes the need of the individual for social interaction,
for group affiliation, for companionship, and for love. Together with these go the more
subtle need to be needed and to be sustained by others and by implication the need for
the protection of other people. The family group and the peer group are obvious
manifestations of these needs. The whole society is organized to a large extent around
these basic social needs. It is clear then that wherever the environment is meant for
people or where the purpose of the design is not contrary to the fulfillment of these social
needs, it should characteristically have a sociopetal form designed to draw people
together, to engender social relationships or at least to make this possible.
stabilizing

 The second set of needs have been called stabilizing needs. We have a need to be free from
fear, anxiety and danger. And we have a need for clear orientation, a need to develop and to
hold a clear philosophy in life., a need to order and organize the environment a hope to have
a say in its form and content through democratic process. We have the inherent need to
manipulate the environment, not only from a point of view of developing physical conditions
responsive to our physiological needs, but also to satisfy some more deeply rooted need to
make a mark, to form and shape the environment according to a symbolic metaphysical urge.
The concept of advocacy planning (self-help and self-determination) is to an extent related to
this desire for stability through participation in decisions concerning one’s own local
environment. The concept of self-help projects where derelict, unused land is transformed
through the energies, initiative, and artistic expression of local people, who will be the users
of the land, gives rise to a form of design activity that not only satisfies the need of human
sense for stability and involvement basic to security but also leads to a completely new type
of design process. Other implication are image ability, the ordering of space so that it is free
from ambiguity, and the selection of paving surfaces to provide information about a place
and its use.
INDIVIDUALS

 The third group is described as individual needs. Some of these overlap or are similar to
needs of self-expression. Here we recognize the need of people at certain moments in their
experience and development of self-awareness to be utterly alone in a period of time, the
need of privacy. There is a strong need for acertain amount self-determination, for an
identity ans sense of personal uniqueness in the environment, and related to this a need to
be able to choose or make individual decisions about one’s life.
 The possibility of privacy today in urban environment becomes more remote the design
environment should make privacy a possibility. This is most likely achieved by the dwelling
itself. Privacy also may be attainable by designing the outdoor environment to create areas
less accessible to direct use by urban population yet within minutes from it. Circulation
should offer choices. Within reason we should be able to do what we want. But we must be
careful that personal expression will not adversely affect the lives and privacy and equal
needs for uniqueness an identity of others in the society. There is a potential conflict
between self-expression and social needs.
Self-expression

 There is variety of component needs making up the self-expression group. They include the
need for self-assertion and exhibition, for dominance and power. There is also a need for
accomplishment and achievement, for prestige, and to be held in esteem by others. Ardrey
calls this, the need for status which is related to the need of territory.
 Territory has been identifeied as oen of the three fundamental human drives, the other two
being status and sex. Laying claim to territory and maintaining a certain distance from one’s
fellow may be considered a real human biological nee.
enrichment
 The last group of human need is called enrichment needs. People (especially children) have a thirst
for knowledge. Self-realization and personal creativity, and, it seems, a strong need for beauty and
aesthetic experience. Human enrichment needs, then, seem to require the provision of information about
the environment so that our understanding of what we see may be increased in detail. The environment
should not only be beautiful itself but it also should provide the possibility for creativity in the form of
environmental manipulation or simply in the provision of opportunities within some kind of open space or
recreation program.
 Having reviewed the generalities of human needs, we must beware of becoming oversensitive and self-
conscious about these needs, which are part of our general awareness. There is a danger in the
development of specific design forms to satisfy or fulfill some of these needs which would lead in all
probability to disappointment and conflict. It is not the intention here to suggest that design should be
specifically oriented toward the fulfillment of any specific aspect of this spectrum of human emotional
needs. It is simply suggested that the design process should identify some of the basic demands or needs
which a particular component of the environment may reasonably be expected satisfy and should ensure
the fulfillment of those desires. Remember, physical environment is only one part of a larger process. It is
the setting in which we, the social animal, interact with other humans or the social environment.
 Environmental perception and behavior

 Behavior, then results from the interaction of the individual (the social environment) and with the
surrounding (the physical environment). Consequently, the environmental designer must be
interested in the structure of the environment and its effect on the individual. Second, and very
much related to this, we must render to understand the way in which the environment is perceived
by the individual; and third, we must be interested in general behavioral reaction to situations, social
and physical.
 Our sensitivity to the environment and our adaptability or response to environmental conditions can
result in specific behavior, although we are actually unconscious of the effect of the environment on
us. This possibility underscores the power that is in the hands of the environmental designer. It has
been demonstrated that behavior and social interaction can be influenced by the arrangement of
furniture in room. It has also been suggested that architectural arrangements can result in conditions
alien to man, for example, where there is no opportunity for privacy (the open plan house) or little
physical contact to the ground( a high-rise apartment). The judgments in this case are not made on
the basis of human survival, which is not in doubt, in terms of probable mental stress and
discomfort. Environments can thus be specifically designed to bring people together agreeably for
some purpose.
 The value of understanding the mechanics of visual sensation is, of course, obvious. Knowing
how the eye works and transforms retinal images of constantly shifting light patterns into the visual
world makes it possible for the designers to eliminate distracting situations which makes life difficult.
For example, our 180 degree peripheral vision exaggerates the sense of movement and the closer
the walls of a tunnel or passageway, the greater our sense of movement.
Perception is a more complex process than just seeing. Through it, people select, organize, and
interpret sensory stimulation into meaningful and coherent images of the world. Sensation shades
into perception as experience goes from the isolated and simple to the complex interactions
characteristic of an ongoing awareness of the environment.
For landscape Architecture, another interesting theory about the interaction of people with the
physical surroundings concerns aesthetic satisfaction. It has been suggested that the requirements
for aesthetic enjoyment are simply the requirements for visual perception itself, raised to a higher
degree. The essential thing in each case is to have a pattern which contains the unexpected. This
seems to be the heart of what we call “beauty”. This is explained as follows, our grasp and
enjoyment of the world rest on two complementary neurophysical principles: the principle of
response to novelty, change and stimulation; and the principle of response to repetition or pattern.
User requirement
Anthropometrics
• The study of human body
measurement for use in
anthropological classification
and comparison.
 Ambulant disabled people

 The figures of ambulant disabled people shown