Environmental Psychology! Anybody there?

[mazlin]

When I was an architecture student in the 70's, there was exciting work from Oscar Newman, Jan Gehl....then CPTED. There seemed to be a lot of common ground between architecture and the social sciences. But today, these two disciplines seem to be very far apart.

Gary Evans lamented about this 10 years ago "....much of the initial impetus for environmental psychology came from the mutual desire of social scientists and designers, particularly architects, to work together to create buildings that would work better for people. Unfortunately that initial enthusiasm has since waned, at least within the United States".

Any change since then? Is there any new work I should look at?

[Glider]

Plenty. The University of Surrey have an Environmental Psychology Research Group and run an MSc in Environmental Psychology.

 

Elsevier publish a journal devoted to the topic 'The Journal of Environemntal Psychology'. That's where I would look for new work in the area. I don't know about the USA though. If I were you, I'd start with the journal and see where the work is coming from.