Room to Think

Designing Places That Feel Human

• Lyssia Katan • Season 1 • Episode 3

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Your surroundings are shaping your mood before you take a single step. We sit down with Professor Justin Hollander to unpack the hidden psychology of places—why our brains hunt for faces in facades, how ornament and craft earn long-term care, and what happens when cities are designed for cars instead of people. From the figural primitive to the power of light materials and human-scale detail, this conversation connects neuroscience with everyday design choices you can make at home and across a neighborhood.

We dig into the realities of shrinking cities and the courage it takes to “plan for decline” so daily life still feels coherent and humane. Hollander explains why some historic forms endure—active ground floors, symmetry, texture—and how blank walls and oversized boxes flatten our attention and sap joy. We explore the social fabric too: third places, wide sidewalks, and plazas that draw people out of their homes, counter loneliness, and create the casual contact that makes communities resilient.

On the practical side, you’ll hear research-backed takeaways: break up blank walls, balance detail with visual breath, aim for a view or “primal vista,” and consider lighter tones to boost mood. At the city scale, we challenge the status quo with a case for new towns planned for walking, biking, and mixed use, enabled by smarter zoning. We also touch on the 20-minute city and emerging links between walkability and brain health, showing how thoughtful design can support memory and well-being over a lifetime.

If this sparks ideas for your home or your block, join us for more design-meets-psychology insights—subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review to help others find the show.

About the Guest

Professor Justin Hollander is Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University. His research focuses on how environments influence human behavior, combining urban planning, neuroscience, psychology, and design.

Learn More About Professor Hollander’s Work

Tufts University Faculty Profile
https://facultyprofiles.tufts.edu/justin-hollander

Research article: How facades and materials impact perception and emotion
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09613218.2025.2506065

Book: Cognitive Architecture: Designing for How We Respond to the Built Environment
https://a.co/d/jby9U51

Professor Justin Hollander:

So when you uh walk down the street, the decisions that have been made before you in terms of the shaping of the built environment, they really shape your experience at an unconscious level. When we look around anywhere as a human, we are looking for essentially two dots for an eye, a line for a nose, and another line for a mouth. It's called the figural primitive. And it's like that template is burned into our mind before we're even born.

Lyssia Katan:

What is one insight from your recent research to improve mood, focus, or well-being?

Professor Justin Hollander:

Human body and brain does not like.

Lyssia Katan:

Let's get into it. Professor Hollander, it is an absolute honor having you on the podcast. I'm so excited to get to ask you my questions because I have read your studies and I'm just fascinated by them. So thank you so much for being on the show. Yes, uh wonderful to be here. Thanks for the invitation. Happy to have you. Professor Hollander is Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University. And he has written many books and dozens of peer-reviewed articles on how places change over time and how that change affects people. For listeners who may be new to your work, how do you describe what you study and why the relationship between the built environment and human behavior has become the center of your career?

Professor Justin Hollander:

Yeah, so when you uh walk down the street, you go visit a friend, you go to a restaurant, the decisions that have been made before you in terms of the shaping of the built environment, whether it's how wide that sidewalk is, what kind of materials were used to build the building, what architectural style was implied, all those decisions are important and they really shape your experience. Amazingly, most of the way they shape your experience is at an unconscious level. We're not even aware of how we're being impacted. And so this is an area that I've been uh interested in a long time. And in the last, I would say about 15 years, I've been increasingly impressed by how much in the sciences they've begun to really understand how those uh those those different visual cues as well as as cues that come in to our other senses um impact us. And so my background is in urban planning. And so that's something I've always been really passionate about. Um, so this research that I've been doing and and just learning about it has been really for the purpose of trying to create better places for people.

Lyssia Katan:

Wow, that's incredible. First of all, thank you for what you do, because we all appreciate it, whether we're consciously aware of it or not. Was there a moment that you decided or you realized this is what you wanted to do?

Professor Justin Hollander:

Well, when I was uh a grad student uh doing my master's in urban planning, I was really drawn to the design side of the program that I was in. And they actually had uh studio environments where you could study landscape architecture. And I was uh I came from a political science background. So this was really fun. Like I got markers and colored pencils, and uh, you know, we we made models. It was it was just uh something so different from what I was used to. If you can appreciate like a political science training, like that's like you mainly just read and write and maybe some statistics, um, that kind of stuff. So I was excited about what that environment offered for me as a student, but it actually became frustrating for me because I was making so many decisions as a designer, uh, shaping places, parks. We did parks and we did plazas, we did uh neighborhoods, and all these decisions I would ask, well, like, how do I do it? And the teachers would say, Oh, well, no, it's a process that you know it takes time and you'll go through, and all of a sudden you'll get like an inspiration in the middle of the night, like this because people did spend all night working on these uh these designs. And so that always was something that bothered me. I was really uh didn't I just didn't buy that mentality that there's no like objectively perfect design that would fit with uh with what we need. But I went on and I ended up not really pursuing the design stuff and stayed in the planning and had this um you know great career as an urban planner, and then went back into academia. And then I met Ann Sussman, and she uh was working as an architect at that time, and she was um dating someone in my department. So uh many years after they were dating, I got in touch with her about a potential collaboration, and she had come from a history of science background. That's what she had studied in college, and then had studied architecture, and she was equally frustrated. Um, and so we started to collaborate and work together and started to understand that there actually are some real well-known within uh particularly in cognitive science, psychology, neuroscience, uh, rules about the how we should shape our built environment, the places that we live in. And they didn't teach that to me when I was uh in my my design studies. And and and Anne was equally frustrated because they didn't teach that to her either.

Lyssia Katan:

And was there a time where you specifically walked into a space and realized that space isn't neutral? Were you frustrated by something in your environment?

Professor Justin Hollander:

Yeah, well, that I mean that it's gonna go back a little bit further. I mean, I think as a younger person, um when I would spend time in environments that were very kind of uh automobile oriented, places that were not really welcoming to pedestrians. I um grew up in a kind of suburban context. And these are these are not um places that were were designed for for me as a human, and I knew that intuitively, I knew that that that so I I think part of what drove me to want to be involved in urban planning at all was was really that that would feeling of being rejected by my by the place I was in.

Lyssia Katan:

By your surroundings. We don't think about that. The world is built for people, but sometimes we forget that we have to, you know, we're the people in it or the people engaging in it. We sometimes build it for not humans, we build it for cars or trucks, but not for us. So speaking of Dr. Anne Sussman, in your book together, Cognitive Architecture, designing for how we respond to the built environment, you argue that people don't experience space abstractly. They experience it through perception, attention, and emotion. What's one insight from the book that most changed how you personally look at everyday environments?

Professor Justin Hollander:

Yeah, I mean, the the book to just back up just a bit is was really started off by um Ann and I, and with the help of our research assistants at Tufts, um, really just trying to cull through that literature. You know, I've I've alluded to this earlier, that there's just so much great science that has been done to understand how we perceive our environment, how we experience places. And so, many ways, the beginning of that book was really just an effort to just translate that science so that designers and planners could understand it. So, yeah, so there's uh there's a lot, a lot. I can't, I don't can I pick one? I'll start with one.

Lyssia Katan:

We'll get into it. We can start with one.

Professor Justin Hollander:

So, yeah, the there's like this interesting idea that has a lot of credibility in the science, scientific community. That when we look around, and I'm not talking about just a bit at a building, when we look around anywhere as a human, we are looking for essentially two dots for an eye, a line for a nose, and another line for a mouth. It's called the figural primitive. And it's like that template is burned into our mind before we're even born. And so uh this uh neuroscientist Eric Candel wrote about how when we're born, we're looking for that. And frankly, that's our that's our mother. We're looking for that two dot two dots for the eye, the line for the nose, the line for the mouth. And then when we see it, that gives us comfort. That means that we found our mother and we can be safe. So we're always looking for that, not just as babies. And so when you look at a lot of traditional architecture, you see that. You see that same figure primitive. Um, you know, Ann likes to call it uh call it face texture. Like the idea that faces are in a lot of designs. Um, I believe you do work with uh tiles. I actually I see it all the time in tiles too. Tiles that are designed to have that kind of face-like orientation. It makes us feel comfortable when you see it. And so that's pretty powerful.

Lyssia Katan:

Wow. Well, that explains so much why I'm seeing faces every time I look out at trash cans or the street or buildings. But actually, with tiles, one of the collections that I got to design for Lily Tile was the canine or the dog faces on tiles. And for some reason, let me tell you, people love it. And I don't know if it's seeing their dog look back at them or just the fact that it's a dog or the face, because that's the first time we put faces on tiles. But now I know the research backs it up. Very cool. Taking a step back from the uh science of how we respond on a larger scale. Your work on shrinking cities has a really strong psychological dimension, cities as a whole, not just individual humans. What emotional or behavioral patterns emerge when a place is losing population? And how does it change human behavior?

Professor Justin Hollander:

Yeah, so this is a a big problem that we face as humans in any kind of situation of loss. Um we are really kind of it's and it's not just like uh kind of a psychological or emotional, it's a social thing that as humans, we want to be part of things that are growing, that are thriving. And so, what a lot of the research that I've done over the years has been looking at places that are losing population, losing jobs. This is something that's hard for people to grapple with. And for the most part, they reject it. They say, well, we're gonna stop it, we're gonna reverse it, we're gonna turn things around. Um, even if the economy suggests that that's not realistic, it's they're still gonna try to do that. And so that's like uh a hard thing for people to grapple with. And I've had some uh good experiences um with uh with studying a couple places where they've they've done this well. And I'll point out to uh U Youngstown, Ohio. Um they went through this really interesting uh planning process, uh community engagement, really trying to rethink what is like happening in the community. In the 1970s, they had a lot of uh plant closures, mainly tire plants, and the population just keep falling kept falling and falling. And during this planning process, people were like, you know what? I don't think we're gonna grow again, and let's just figure out how to how to make it work. So they started uh to plan for decline. And so so that that I think is uh is a healthy way to kind of manage manage this kind of change.

Lyssia Katan:

What do you mean plan for decline? Did they just uh accept that people are gonna leave, it's gonna shrink?

Professor Justin Hollander:

Yeah. Um and and to think about how can they adjust the physical form of their communities to reflect that there aren't as many people there? I mean, think about it like a rural area, very low population, and then it grows and becomes more suburban. So why can't you go the other direction? Why can't a city go down to be more suburban? Or even in some parts, maybe even more rural. I actually traveled as part of a research project I did in uh Flint, Michigan, and that's a place that's experienced quite a lot of population decline. And I was so impressed on how you go through these some neighborhoods, they feel rural, but like not in a bad way. They've experienced a lot of decline, a lot of disinvestment. But like a guy I met, he grows hops in his backyard. He's got all these dogs, the dogs are all like running around, leaping, leaping here and there. And so, yeah, I mean, it's it doesn't have to be a bad thing. And that and that urban planners and designers can help if a community decides that this is what they want to do, kind of help them adjust and make make their communities feel more comfortable at us at a lower density. That's all.

Lyssia Katan:

Is there an example of this happening somewhere where it was shrinking and then city officials did something to turn it around and it successfully brought people back?

Professor Justin Hollander:

Well, that's the thing. You're uh saying the measure of success is to bring them back. Um if you are okay with that not being the measure, then yeah, there are quite a few places, uh Detroit that they've had some success with this. Um I did a whole book about New Bedford, Massachusetts, uh, which was uh one of the settings of uh Moby Dick. So kind of a famous historic city um not too far from where I am in in Boston. And yeah, they've they've done a great job of managing. Is it booming? No. I mean, it's uh I I call New Bedford, it's an ordinary city. It's it's not has not like taken off. But you talk to people live there, and you know, most of them are very happy. They're very happy in in a place that has essentially managed that that change in a in a healthy way.

Lyssia Katan:

And it on the flip side, are there cities where they grew too quickly and they just have not been able to adjust to uh making it comfortable for the growth? Oh, definitely, yeah.

Professor Justin Hollander:

This is a perennial problem. And you know what we often see is connected to what we were discussing earlier, which is if a place is growing and it's not managed well, it's not planned for, what ends up happening is a lot of very automobile-oriented growth in the periphery. And it just spreads, this kind of urban sprawl effect, and that ends up contributing to a lot of problems. It could be environmental problems, air pollution problems. There could be problems related to fiscal stability as the place spreads out. What about the local governments that are in that core? Are they uh gonna struggle with being able to bring enough tax revenue? Who's building the schools for all the new families and the kids who are moving out on the on the periphery? And it's all it's almost always what I've seen at least is that that sprawling pattern of growth is automobile-oriented and tends to be a lot of big box stores. Um these are places that psychologically for humans are these are not the kind of places that we we thrive in and frankly are wasteful because they're not the kind of environments that will last. They'll be recycled and reused or destroyed and thrown in the landfill at some point. So that's that's also really sad.

Lyssia Katan:

Well, speaking of that, in your research, what design choices or urban planning assumptions consistently produce negative results? And on the flip side, which ones consistently produce positive results?

Professor Justin Hollander:

Yeah. So so I you know, one of the things that that's uh relevant here is this idea of like, how do we create places that endure? So if if a place endures, it will be more sustainable from like an environmental standpoint. You know, you won't have to kind of keep rebuilding and throwing it away. Um, but if it endures, it's also gonna be places that that people want to be at, which will suggest that that there's qualities about it that are good for them and makes them happy and makes them enjoy being there. So uh this great story that um my my colleague co-author Ann Sussman liked to tell that this um uh uh secondary school that she went to, there was an older building on campus and historic building. It looked like a face. It had all the bilateral symmetry and all the architectural elements, and it was a beautiful building. The the administration had decided they were going to demolish the building and build a new kind of modern style uh uh structure. Well, the alums all got excited about it and they were like, that's not happening, not on our watch. And they raised the money to save the building. So it endured. That building endured. It's an investment that was made was probably over 100 years ago, continued. So we want to be able to make design places that are gonna have that kind of energy behind them, that people are gonna be like, I want to save it, I want to invest it in it, I want to repair the roof, I want to uh make improvements to that building, and that that is the kind of place that will be good for people in years to come.

Lyssia Katan:

Do cities in Europe that are much older and have more historical value, do they kind of connect? And do the faces on those buildings being the sculptures, do they have anything to do with it, or is that purely coincidence?

Professor Justin Hollander:

I don't think it's a coincidence. I don't think so. And I and I I think we can definitely look to uh a lot of European cities as a model for for the kind of designs that that that endure and that people connect to and that they remember and they want to go back to. I like this story about uh Huawei, which is a you know giant Chinese electronics company. They built a new campus in Shenzhen, I think, in China. So this is worth looking up. Look at this website. Look, read about this this new campus. It looks like a European village. They could have built a giant spaceship like when Apple built their uh their headquarters, like an orb or something, or or yes, uh uh in Seattle, um, Amazon has this um kind of ridiculous-looking uh futuristic building. No, they didn't do that. They were very smart because they built a uh basically a replication of the kind of uh urban design that has endured for, in some cases, a thousand years. That's what they built, and they have that future in mind as a company. They expect to be around that long.

Lyssia Katan:

That's fascinating. And actually, that kind of ties in. I had a conversation with um a guest that we had on the podcast, Miriam Carpenter. She works with Wood, and she was saying that things that are created by humans inherently have more value. And when you see the door that's crafted by a human or an artist, it just has more value to to us as humans, and then we almost Feel bad destroying it or tearing it down.

Professor Justin Hollander:

Right. And you know, actually, I read something so fascinating on that same point. That there's something that happens at a psychological level when you see something, anything really, but that you try, you try to imagine your mind at an unconscious level how you would make it. So if it was made by a machine, that's very hard. And I don't know if the brain just kind of shuts down and it's just like, ah, there's no way. But if it's it was made by a crafts person, or at least made by a machine that makes it look like it was made by a craftsperson, you look at it and you're like, wow, that's okay. What kind of what kind of equipment would I use? And that the idea that you would do that on an unconscious level means you're connecting. And this is why ornamentation is so important. Um, you know, whether it's tiles or in any kind of other building design or in cities, you want that decoration, you want that ornament. So people, like you said, care about what they're seeing.

Lyssia Katan:

Yeah, that that's kind of the reason why we do what we do at Lily Tile, is we know that our tiles look very different than everything else on the market, but it allows people to express their personalities in their homes. And in turn, they feel more excited to come home and more they're happier at 7 a.m. when they turn on the lights in their bathroom and their bright pink tiles or sparkly, you know, tile. So that's very interesting that the research does back it up. This is just something we've been doing, and and it's nice to know that we're headed in the right direction. Building on your facade research, which you sent to me. Uh, we mainly uh work with in interior tiles. I mean, our tiles go outdoor as well. But building on your facade research, how much do surface level design decisions like material, texture, uh repetition, rhythm, how much do they matter compared to larger planning moves when it comes to how stressed or calm people feel?

Professor Justin Hollander:

Yeah, so um my colleague, uh Dr. Maria Christoffi, she's at the University of Houston, and I did this project and I just published it pretty recently. Um so I'd encourage you to kind of read it or have your listeners read it. Uh, you know, what it what we did was we looked at a range of different uh material types and across different dimensions around how uh rough or hard it was, um, how natural or bright it was, and how solid or uh or perforated it was. And and you know, it's not like I can like say, oh, everyone should just buy solid materials. It's not like that, but it's more just that we were able to show in this research using uh largely eye tracking and facial expression analysis that it really matters. That there is of a significant difference in how people see each of these different types of um materials. And we were focusing on it from a facade perspective and are looking at different building facades, though I think that across the design disciplines, this type of uh, you know, these kinds of findings are equally valid. But but yeah, I mean, you you what we were able to see is that people actually, when they look at the different facades across these dimensions, they experience them differently and they had different types of uh facial expressions, like happy or sad or angry, um, and that they kind of fixated on different parts. Their eyes kind of went to different parts. And so it's uh I gave a talk about some of this research at the uh Yale School of Architecture, which you know, it's very much it's very much in the kind of fine arts tradition, that school. And I had uh a kind of a few angry, angry uh uh listeners, and they were like, you can't just like input a design into a computer and tell it No, you can't, that's true. Um so it's it's still there's still an important role for the designer, but the designer needs to pay attention to this stuff too, is is kind of what we're trying to show in this research and and in others.

Lyssia Katan:

Do you feel like in current designs, designers just don't take any of this into consideration?

Professor Justin Hollander:

Yeah, so when I started doing this research, basically nobody did, um, but I'm starting to see the emergence of a community of of uh you know practitioners who are really taking this stuff seriously and and incorporating it into their work. And you know, I think that's that's promising, but for the most part, no, that's that's really just not happening. And and so we're trying to trying to evangelize here and try to get people to change.

Lyssia Katan:

Yeah, it almost feels like sometimes uh the cooler things are coming out. It's like shiny object syndrome, right? We want this, now we want this, now we want this. But when we take a step back, we realize that maybe those crazy textures and patterns on our wall at home are not doing us very well or not doing us good and uh internally. But it's it almost seems like now people are slowly starting to notice, but doesn't seem like it was the case, you know, many years ago. From an environmental psychology perspective, what parallels do you see between the psychological impact of a city and the psychological impact of a home, if any? Do you see any parallels?

Professor Justin Hollander:

Yeah, no, I mean I think there's there's huge parallels. And, you know, so just because of my training, you know, most of my work has really been in that kind of public realm and that kind of city scale. I actually have this really fun project I'm working on with a museum north of Boston, the uh PBD Essex Museum. And so here everything we're doing is um it's interior. And we're working with, they have a neuroscientist on staff, which is uh pretty extraordinary for an art museum. But they're very, very concerned about the experience of people inside the museum. And so we're we're working with them to do some of the same kind of biometrics and and other types of uh analysis, but we are also going to be partnering with them on the exterior because this is a museum that has uh maybe about a dozen or so uh historic buildings in the neighborhood. So so you're you're kind of asking about like how do those two um scales kind of operate, and and um you know, we're in this study at least, we're we're trying to kind of look at that very question. And I and I and I think it's it's valid that when you are walking around in uh say a public park or something, um, that's different than walking around in your living room. Um, but you know, your brain doesn't really know that. Um, so you know, one of the things we often talk about in uh environmental psychology is the idea of a primal vista. So that has to do with like being able to look like really far out and be able to kind of see um the distant objects and to be able to recognize that you are in a state of um security and that that that you can see far potential predators or whatnot. Um, but that's also true in your home. And you know, if if it's not like um within your own uh space that you're in, it's about looking out a window and to be able to kind of see far enough to be able to kind of feel feel comfortable.

Lyssia Katan:

Interesting. That makes us feel safer, being able to see out. So like higher buildings where we can see the whole view, do they make us feel safer?

Professor Justin Hollander:

Yeah, I mean, I'm actually not sure I know the answer to that question. I I think that uh being very high introduces a lot of other variables, um, you know, like vertigo-related variables. Um but at least certainly like uh medium height, I think that that's something that that the evidence is pretty clear that um it gives us uh positionality over potential danger that that people really like.

Lyssia Katan:

I'm curious if any of that ties to like historical wars and when they would have like posts in the Roman Empire, you know, overlooking to see if there are any attackers or during the Ottoman period. I'm curious if that if that ties to it. And and kind of going back to your work on the uh with the museum and the exterior facade, I spent a long time living and working in Philadelphia. I went to school there. And Philadelphia is a beautiful city if you've been. It has a lot of historical charm. But seeing a lot of the new buildings popping up, it's almost jarring seeing these gorgeous, you know, 500-year-old buildings, and then right next to it a modern like cube. And what does that do to us? Uh, it doesn't, besides just annoy us, really.

Professor Justin Hollander:

But yeah, no, I I think it's really bad. And um, you know, when you are working at that eye level, someone walking on the street, it is possible that that these architects can activate that um facade right at the eye level. Um, but most of them don't. They choose not to. Um, you know, are you familiar with the work of Jan Gell, a Danish architect? He's written this uh uh book called uh Cities for People, and he talks about because he's he's like uh very savvy uh businessman, you know, and he has this big practice, and he's like, you know what, you need to build a giant cube, build it. But just pay attention to that first one or two stories and and you know, make it feel like it's a 500-old year old building at that first because that's just how people operate. You know, you don't generally look up. People don't generally look up. So, you know, if you can just capture that experience of just being in that space um at eye level, you know, you need to build a giant skyscraper made of glass and steel, you know, that's his opinion. Do it, fine. It's okay. And so I agree. I think that makes sense, but you know, you can still pay attention to that public realm, that that eye-level experience.

Lyssia Katan:

Yeah, it almost feels like uh in our human nature, we appreciate things that are well made. And now we're seeing when things are very factory, you know, off the production line. It's very we almost appreciate it less. Perhaps there's a there's a parallel with us appreciating a building less because it doesn't really do it for us. It doesn't have a doesn't have a face, doesn't feel thoughtfully curated. No ornamentation. No ornamentation. Who knew it was this important for us as humans? But we do it all the time, right? Every holiday season, there's ornaments, there's decoration, and and they say it's the best time of the year because everyone is is excited and there's ornaments, there's beauty. There is, there's gotta be a correlation. Take it all out, take it all out. So, okay, how much responsibility do you feel the built environment accounts for or bears for today's loneliness crisis, if any?

Professor Justin Hollander:

Uh well, yeah, I mean, there's so many factors. Um, I wouldn't want to go out on a limb and say definitively, but um, you know, there's no question that the way that we shape our homes and the growing size of a typical housing unit um makes it so that people are less likely to spend time um in public spaces. I had the uh opportunity last year to travel to Uganda and was really, I'd never been to Africa before, and I was really uh surprised to see how much people spend time in uh the evening and their free time um out and about in uh in public spaces. People essentially are pouring out of their homes and uh and interacting with each other and socializing and and singing and dancing and eating together. And I came back home and it's just like everyone just shuts themselves out into their into their apartments or their homes, and um, yeah, so that's a that's a pretty big difference. So we can we can shape our environments differently, but culturally I think there's also you know something, something wrong with us that are making us so antisocial.

Lyssia Katan:

But do you think that's done on purpose? Because I've I've seen and read a lot of things about the third space in Europe very very commonly, the plazas, the piazzas, places you just gather without having to ask permission, whereas in the US it's very much home, work, or somewhere like a restaurant. You know, tell me more about that if you have any experience with that.

Professor Justin Hollander:

Yeah, no, this is a lot of uh research and uh my my own work. I've seen that tremendously, that you just it's so important for in a in an urban planning context that to make space for those third spaces. Um and they they can be public parks, they could be markets, they could be like a plaza. There's a lot of ways that can be designed. You know what I was talking about in in Uganda and the cities, they're uh they're just very wide sidewalks, you know, that just the ability to be able to have space. And during COVID, that was like a big thing. You know, a lot of restaurants started pouring out into the sidewalk and and taking over parking spaces. Um, so that's that's uh I think a lot of that's pulled back in the old ways they're setting back in.

Lyssia Katan:

But do you think that's done on purpose in the U.S.? Because the US uh focuses more on the individual?

Professor Justin Hollander:

Oh, yeah, 100%. Yeah. And and and I think that in some ways the home building industry is is partially responsible because they really market the home as a sanctuary, as a idea of a family room. Um, you know, that that that we want to spend all of our time inside with our immediate family. I mean, that that is really kind of antagonistic to the idea of the the third spaces. I'm I'm I don't want to like say that that's wrong, but I'm just saying that that's kind of how we got how we got where we are today, I think.

Lyssia Katan:

Right. It's like there's more focus on the individual or the home unit rather than the community as a whole.

Professor Justin Hollander:

I read this great book uh called Trespassers, and it's uh by a scholar at the University of Maryland. Her name is uh Willow Lung Amom, and she was studying this community uh in Silicon Valley, where it was a community that had uh evolved in the 1950s, very kind of mid-century, low-slung, uh, low density housing. And these Asian immigrants, mainly folks who were working at in Silicon Valley, the big tech firms, were moving in and built and demolishing those homes and building very large three plus story what were uh were called McMansions or monster homes, uh pejoratively. But and the and the the discussion that she wrote about in this book was in the public realm was like these new buildings are for the people and they and they don't spend time outside anymore, and that their experience is all like they essentially have like a wall around their lives, and that as a result of that debate, the city council basically made it illegal to build these these teardowns and to build the the monster homes. Um but the author was really good, really sensitive about how that's really unfair. I mean, if that's their choice, if they if that's that's something they they want to do, that they should be allowed to.

Lyssia Katan:

But that's actually pretty sad because I um threw a lot of our tiles are made in Vietnam, so I got the opportunity to go. And some of the happiest people I've ever met, they're living multiple generations in a home and and not a very big one at all. And here you see in America these giant homes with a few people living inside, and they're not even a fraction of as happy as the people in Vietnam. So it's it's fascinating to me. It really is.

Professor Justin Hollander:

Yeah, and that's that's you're right about the multi-generation. That was a big part of the people who wanted to have these large homes so they can accommodate all the multiple generation. But the uh existing residents were saying, Oh no, but we want you to have a big lawn so you can be outside and then we can see you while we're walking by and wave. Just like a whole other rabbit hole.

Lyssia Katan:

But I actually read that uh it helps the older generation, like the grandparents, to be close to the grandkids because it helps them, it keeps them young and helps the parents take some pressure off. So they were doing something right. So, what's one big misunderstanding the general public has about how cities or environments shape their psychological experience?

Professor Justin Hollander:

There's a lot of misunderstandings. Um I think the biggest probably would be that we don't most people don't realize how much is happening autonomically, like on its own. That you know, I mean, we all know that like our heart is beating on its own, right? We understand that. We understand that we're not consciously deciding that. But we don't people don't really just like get this idea that if you you know walk around, you go outside, you go to uh this approach the uh restaurant across near nearby, like that that you're you're also responding in all of those same ways without realizing it. You're either getting stressed out, you're getting worried, you're getting happy, whatever it is. Um, and you're not controlling it. So that's one that's one thing I'd like people to take away.

Lyssia Katan:

That is a big one. And and I just want to go back real quick to your study on facades. Is it correct that regardless of if it's natural or man-made materials, the lighter ones tend to have a better influence in color rather than the darker ones on us?

Professor Justin Hollander:

Yeah, I mean, that that was something that we found. And and it's pretty consistent with other research that that I've done, and just other like studies I've read, um, that that kind of that kind of lighter, it's just kind of like more upbeat. You you've heard of seasonal affective disorder. It's kind of the same idea that that people tend to want to be around things that are light. So keep that in mind. But we're not gonna it's not gonna like constrain any designers. Sometimes dark, dark makes sense.

Lyssia Katan:

No, I I mean I read that actually part of the reason why um like Swedish decor is very, or Finn Finland, Denmark, all day, very light woods, light colors, because they have so many hours of darkness in the winter, and that really helps keep them happy and they spend a lot of time at home. Yeah. Rather than sometimes in the US, we go wild with our wall colors and our furniture colors. For someone listening who wants to improve their environment, whether it's the interior or the exterior, perhaps they're selecting a facade for their new home. What is one principle from environmental psychology uh, or or one insight from your recent research that they can apply immediately to improve mood, focus, or well-being? Or all three?

Professor Justin Hollander:

Yeah. Well, so one of the things that has come up uh over and over again in my own uh research, my own reading, on other people's work, is that the human body and brain does not like blank walls. I'm looking behind you, and you have these two lovely paintings. Um, but yeah, I mean, what we don't like is when it's just blank. Uh, when there's no ornamentation, there's no decoration, there's no complication. Um so when a person is thinking about making some uh improvements or modifying their own home environment, just kind of look around. Like, are there a lot of like blank walls? Um, and if so, that might be bad for you. That might be kind of bringing you down. Um, so think about ways to to to decorate or or even it could just be like painting with some um You know, whether it's uh lines or some patterns or wallpaper? Do people still do wallpaper? I don't know.

Lyssia Katan:

Yeah, they still do wallpaper.

Professor Justin Hollander:

So that's that's another way to do it.

Lyssia Katan:

Is there a tipping point? Because I once stayed in Airbnb that had frames on every square inch of the wall. And I was so anxious. I just was stressed in that space. So is there a kind of like a where it's too much, maybe?

Professor Justin Hollander:

Oh yeah. I mean, there's no there's no question. Um, so when I talk about this idea of a blank facade or a blank wall or something, we are in three-dimensional space and we're always moving around and whatnot. So um, so you know, I mean, think about it like that. Like if it's at like a dining room table and you're sitting there, you're not moving, you're still, and most of your field of view is just blank wall, I would say that's a problem. But if it's just like, you know, different, maybe like in a hallway or something as you're going from one place to another, that there's some blank space, it kind of gives you like a little bit of a breath, maybe a little uh relaxation between uh the next object, um, you know, I think that's that's fine. But a trained designer who has read my book, Hogan Architecture, I mean, that would be a person that you know could could kind of help, I think, make that decision about where exactly you want that make that compromise.

Lyssia Katan:

And do faces and art make us do we respond differently to faces and art as we do to faces and other things such as buildings?

Professor Justin Hollander:

Yeah, 100%. Okay. So, you know, to be kind of aware of that, um, not to necessarily say everyone's home needs to be a portrait gallery.

Lyssia Katan:

Does it matter though? If I'm like fascinated by this face concept, does it matter if the face is smiling or frowning? Does that make a difference or not really?

Professor Justin Hollander:

Yeah, I mean, there's it definitely does make a difference. Yeah. Um, but you know, we are we are very complicated. Um, I really emphasize the unconscious and all that, but we also are conscious. I mean, I'm talking to you. I'm not talking to you unconsciously. Um, so we do experience the world around us consciously as well. And so if you see a face that's frowning at you, um whether that it impacts you emotionally or not, you know, it's still gonna you're still gonna be aware of it and you might not like that.

Lyssia Katan:

So you might think the building across the street is angry at you every day when you look at it. If you could imagine the future of cities 20 to 30 years from now, what innovations or shifts do you hope will embrace to create environments that truly, truly support human flourishing?

Professor Justin Hollander:

Yeah, so one of the things that I've been really frustrated with for a long time as an urban planner is that the response to kind of growing places, if you will, the mantra has been what we need to do is we need to focus new development in existing urban areas and restrict the spreading and growth of development in in new areas. And that's been the mantra. And I like bought into that. That sounds like, well, yeah, sure, we should we should do that. Sounds really good. And as an urban planner, we learned about all the ways that you can do both of those things, you know, how you can uh conserve uh land and the periphery and how you can encourage new development. But I have been doing this now for a long time, and I have come to recognize that that mantra is fatally flawed. It just, at least in our capitalist democracy, it just doesn't work. And that's what I've seen with my own eyes, which is that the investment in the existing urban areas is good, but it's very modest. And you see and and the sprawl, that kind of uh growth continues to happen at just such a clip, such a high clip. So it doesn't even it doesn't even work. So the answer, I think, is kind of an older idea, which is uh new towns. And so if we can be building new towns from scratch in areas that otherwise would just be built up with conventional automobile-oriented subdivisions, if we can build new towns which are walkable, pedestrian-oriented, bikeable, transit supportive, mixed use, with the kind of third spaces we're talking about, then I think that's the answer. And and a lot of people agree with me, but the answer, people have always said, well, but like, how do you do it? You can't do it, it's too hard. Um, in the 1970s, the federal government got in the business of building new towns. They built about five or six or seven, and that didn't work out. Um, so how do you do it? So the answer is zoning. Um, so I've been working with this group of people. We did a big conference uh a few months ago. And yeah, the answer is we can we can really rethink about how zoning works to be able to encourage this kind of development that creates the places that we've been talking about for the last hour. Um, but you do it through a zoning mechanism that um will give the real estate developers uh autonomy to be able to create great places.

Lyssia Katan:

When the US did create this in the 70s, why did it fail? What happened?

Professor Justin Hollander:

Yeah, so so there's a few reasons. You know, one is that they were still kind of caught up in uh kind of a modernist design philosophy. So one famous one is um Columbia, Maryland, and that's halfway between Baltimore and Washington. Have you been?

Lyssia Katan:

No, I haven't.

Professor Justin Hollander:

So instead of building a downtown, they built a shopping mall, which is surrounded by just like a sea of parking.

Lyssia Katan:

Interesting.

Professor Justin Hollander:

And like it's really easy to drive around. There are these big, wide roads that go from one place to the other, but it's it's not safe to bike, and and you wouldn't want to walk. It's too far from one place to the other to walk. So the sense of scale and everything was just totally um fundamentally flawed. And I think that I mean, my personal bias uh is that the federal government's really not that well suited to be designing places. Again, that's where my idea that this conference I led, you know, it's really about how can we empower real estate developers working with architects and planners, designers. Um, you know, let them make the make the right decisions. It's really not really government bureaucrats aren't really so well suited to to some of the these uh sensitive choices.

Lyssia Katan:

Yeah, and sometimes I feel like in the US everything is so large, which sometimes we think bigger is better, but you go to these European cities and everything is so small, just a few minutes away, and and we almost want less because you can walk, you can bike, it's very accessible. Whereas here you have everything, but it's just so far away. I sometimes get exhausted walking from one end of the uh to the other of Costco, and it's all in the same store.

Professor Justin Hollander:

So Yeah, well, that's great. I I um read something recently my mother sent uh me, um, so I'll give her credit. So the 20-minute city, the idea that within a 20-minute walk, you can get all of your needs. Well, some scientists did this study looking at how much that had a relationship with people's brain health. So there's a lot of research on Alzheimer's, and so much of that research has focused on like biochemical processes in the brain. Well, these people they decided to do something different. They said, well, where do these people live? And it turned out that the people who lived in these 20-minute cities had much better brain health than other people. It's better for you, and it'll make you give you a better memory if if you're in a place that's that's walkable.

Lyssia Katan:

Yeah, I mean, you look at the blue zones also, and many of them are tiny little like a little island in Greece where everybody knows one another and within walking distance. So hopefully we're going that direction. Like the pendulum is swim swinging the other direction. I hope so. So this show is about spaces, right? Interior, exterior. I want to ask, is there a space in your life, past or present, that has genuinely changed you?

Professor Justin Hollander:

And why? Well, I'm really glad you asked this because I did this research project a couple years back on my hometown. Um, so I grew up in Connecticut, in a town that's on the water called Westport. And I kind of were I was kind of curious about the same thing. So I traveled, I didn't I haven't lived there um in a long time, but I decided I'd go back and I traveled all over the town. My dad drove me around, and we I took pictures of all of like the places I remember spending time in, like my elementary school, the beach, uh Main Street, all that. Um, and then I did uh eye tracking on those pictures to see like what are the things that kind of draw me in. And and I I did find that a lot of those places had very strong uh elements, uh, whether they were kind of um visual like or colors or shapes um that that really drew my attention. And I don't know, it seems to make sense. So I wrote it up and I'm hoping it gets published in this book that that's coming out soon. But um I'll sh I'll share it with you if it comes out. But yeah, I think that I think that that really, you know, there is a tie between like what are in these, I mean in this case it's a picture, but like in the field of vision of where in a place you're at, um, and what and what do you remember? What do you what do you think about?

Lyssia Katan:

Professor Hollander, it has been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. You are a wealth of knowledge, and I could talk to you for three hours. Uh, thank you for all of the insights. We will link your book, your research in the show notes for our listeners. But I truly value your time and thank you so much for joining us on the show. It's been a pleasure speaking with you.

Professor Justin Hollander:

Yeah, well, thank you for the invitation. I've very much enjoyed uh talking to you. Thank you.

Lyssia Katan:

Thank you so much for spending this time with me on Room to Think. If you enjoyed this episode, feel free to follow the show, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who you think would really appreciate a more thoughtful approach to their space. You can find more Design Meets Psychology insights on social, in our community, and definitely in upcoming episodes so you can build a better life by design. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you next time.