Environmental psychology

Environmental psychology has as its main tenet that the meaning intentionally embodied in built environment is not always decoded by citizens as intended. Environmental cognition cannot be designed. A related approach from urban planning is to avoid stressful and potentially threatening feelings of being lost in large buildings, and resulting perceived threat by providing “legibility” so that “one can comprehend and navigate environments” . An example would be “securitization” as an emerging process: We cannot just decide about security by way of planning, such as “designing out” crime or “designing in” protection and resilience. Therefore, it is important that urban designs “incorporate public meanings” and citizens’ images of places, including – one can add – those of “secure” or “safe” places. As a result, also the identification of “weak points” in urban environments from a security culture point of view has to be seen as socially negotiated and constructed sense-making that takes place in cultural contexts. Debates in urban design though have often disregarded this aspect, rather centring on “which good design determines good behavior”. However, additional aspects have to be considered so to arrive at a comprehensive view to inform security-conscious urban planning decisions. For example, conflicts between different social groups about public space are a democratic phenomenon that should not be subject to designing-out; security aspects of urban design should not be overly mainstreamed because planning to increase security of excluded groups may also contribute to making cities safer; and desire for security should not inform urban planning to contribute to threatening citizens’ rights of expression and dissent, owing to the old principle that city air should make people free, rather than constrain them.