Human experience in the natural and built environment : implications for research policy and practice

22nd IAPS conference. Edited book of abstracts. 427 pp. University of Strathclyde, Sheffield and West of Scotland Publication. ISBN: 978-0-94-764988-3

By-standing memories of curious observations: Children's storied landscapes of ecological encounter.

Founded in contemporary concerns that children are increasingly disconnected from nature, this article explores how children re-imagine their memories of childhood experiences within the landscape of a National Park. The concept of ‘re-connecting’ children with ‘nature’ has recrystalised around conceptualisations of ‘slow ecopedagogy’ as a form of ecological conscientisation.Through creative mapping with children from the Brecon Beacons National Park, Wales, this article questions whether exposure to such environments predisposes young people to an environmental consciousness. Examining children’s creative representations of childhood memories from nonhuman encounters, and building on Philo’s discussion of ‘childhood reverie’, we develop the concept of by-standing memories to articulate how children re-story their own memories, the landscapes in which they take place and the nonhumans they include. Something of a ‘child panic’ currently surrounds the disconnect between children and ecology. While some are concerned by this ‘child panic’, which positions children as ‘by-standers’ to adult affairs, we argue that by-standing is critical for how children tell stories of their dwellings in, and curious observations of, place. The re-telling of childhood memories stretches the conceptualisation of slow ecopedagogy beyond the place of encounter, to the creative spaces of storying and re-telling, which are equally critical for memory itself

Mapping the unseen: making sense of the subjective image.

It used to be thought that photography, as a kind of automatic mapping, could provide an objective view of the world. Now we are aware of the power of framing and other interventions between what is 'out there' and what is captured in depiction. Perhaps even perception, let alone depiction, shares this subjectivity? The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis holds that different cultures actually see the world in different ways, as evidenced and influenced by concepts in their languages – though this idea has been derided, for example by Pinker. A key difficulty is that the word subjectivity is bandied about without care for its different meanings and without distinguishing the many forms it takes in the graphic image. If into this muddle we introduce the idea of interactivity, still greater confusion easily follows. The chapter brings some order to different kinds and levels of subjectivity by documenting how they are reflected in forms of graphical mapping. In the process, it becomes clear how significant is the change in media technologies from those bound by the conventional rectangles of the page and screen to media which are interactive, pervasive, multimodal, physical and social

Guidelines Towards Better Participation of Older Adults in Software Development Processes using a new SPIRAL Method and Participatory Approach

This paper presents a new method of engaging older participants in the process of application and IT solutions development for older adults for emerging IT and tech startups. A new method called SPIRAL (Support for Participant Involvement in Rapid and Agile software development Labs) is proposed which adds both sustainability and flexibility to the development process with older adults. This method is based on the participatory approach and user empowerment of older adults with the aid of a bootstrapped Living Lab concept and it goes beyond well established user-centered and empathic design. SPIRAL provides strategies for direct involvement of older participants in the software development processes from the very early stage to support the agile approach with rapid prototyping, in particular in new and emerging startup environments with limited capabilities, including time, team and resources

Invisible Bricks: urban places for social wellbeing

Social sustainability in urban places is undervalued in urban planning due to the intangible nature of the concept. By valuing lived experiences of place, this research connects social and environmental sustainability pillars to support planning for socioenvironmental justice from a citizen’s perspective. The quality of the urban outdoor environment is explored in relation to safety and individual and collective efficacy for social wellbeing which contextualises the role of urban green space. This study suggests socio-environmental sustainability is related at an individual and collective level. Safe social environments can support place attachment processes and safe green spaces can support self-regulation of emotions that influences behaviours. The urban outdoors can be viewed as a social learning environment. An inductive interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) led enquiry has been conducted which suggests urban places for social wellbeing can be explained by a framework that integrates social and environmental psychology and spatial politics theories. This study suggests that place attachment is at the heart of dynamic social environments and influences social learning behaviours through vicarious learning and the manifestation of social spaces as framed by Scannell and Gifford’s Tripartite Framework of Place Attachment, Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory and Lefebvre’s Theory of Produced Social Space. Designing for socio-environmental justice is associated with understanding human irrationality due to poor social and environmental quality. This research suggests the right to feeling safe and the quality of the urban environment, including safe green spaces, becomes an issue for the operation of democracy and facilitating self and collective efficacy, by recognising the invisible bricks that form urban places for social wellbeing

The Role of the Built Environment in Human Life. Selected Issues

This article attempts to outline the nature of research on space urbanised by people and to determine the four main fields of research aimed at the problems of man and the built environment. In the next part, particular attention is paid to issues related to the impact of the built environment on the life of its residents in order to highlight the particular role and complexity of this area of research. This study, acting as a kind of test of the research, cannot be considered representative. Nevertheless, the analysis prompts several reflections on the current and future role of the built environment in the development of our civilisation, as well as further challenges related to it

Older People’s Well-being Affordances at the Local High Street: A Study of Local Town Centres in Edinburgh

This paper discusses the key tenets of my research which looks at the positive health-promoting features of the public realm of local High Streets accruing to the experiential dimension of well-being in everyday life of older people. Away from functional models of ageing in place, it locates my work at the intersection between James Gibson ecological theory of perception and the salutogenic interpretive framework of people-urban public realm interaction, adapted from medical sociologist Aaron Antonovsky’s Sense of Coherence (SOC) construct (Antonovsky 1993b)(Eriksson & Lindstrӧm 2007). SOC’s three main categories: comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness, frames older people’s interaction with the local High Street public realm which is re-imagined as a landscape of well-being affordances. The paper explores the links between the SOC constructs and the emotional, social, cultural and physical resources these locales may afford to older people

Thinking with Feeling: Children’s Emotional Orientations to Public Life

The article explores how the concept of ‘emotional orientation’ helps us to reimagine the relationship between childhood and public life. By comparing a subset of two ethnographic biographies of underprivileged children, aged 6-8 years from contrasting neighbourhoods in Hyderabad, India, we illustrate the ways in which ‘emotional orientation’ could mediate and signify children’s experiences of public life. The analysis builds on the girls’ common experience of ‘scolding’ to map out the visceral aspects of poverty, local belonging, place sensitivity, power, and social inequality in their lives; the implications for their engagement with public life is noted throughout. Thinking with feeling, we argue, offers crucial insights for (re)imagining the relationship between childhood and public life, and children’s participation therein. In particular, the affective analysis provides the opportunity to tap into children’s political knowingness: a knowingness that eludes normative discourses of public life, but which nevertheless is a vital source of children’s everyday participation