This book calls attention to the
public space of cities. It proposes that the environmental performance
of public space is underdeveloped and is primed to play a more
integrated role in combatting the urgency of climate change, while also
creating a more meaningful experience of the city. The approach is
influenced by recent insights from neuroscience that are generating a
growing body of evidence for the underlying bodily basis of mind and
meaning imply a reformulation of urban design theory.


Minding the City
is an effort to refocus the subject of urban design on the tangible and
visceral experience of public space, to remind urban designers that our
concept of the city is grounded in bodily experience. It discusses
emerging insights from neuroscience and their potential impact on urban
design in detail, not as a formula for design, but to bring awareness, a
new sensibility to the design process. It uses a set of case studies to
illustrate how the insights from neuroscience are operative in how we
experience and value the built environment. It finishes with an
exploration of the sensory and aesthetic potential of sustainable
systems and then illustrates, through a series of urban design studies,
how they might be used to create better environmental performance while
creating more meaningful, even poetic urban spaces.