What Happens in Your Brain When You Walk Down the Street? Implications of Architectural Proportions, Biophilia, and Fractal Geometry for Urban Science

This article reviews current research in visual urban perception. The temporal sequence of the first few milliseconds of visual stimulus processing sheds light on the historically ambiguous topic of aesthetic experience. Automatic fractal processing triggers initial attraction/avoidance evaluations of an environment’s salubriousness, and its potentially positive or negative impacts upon an individual. As repeated cycles of visual perception occur, the attractiveness of urban form affects the user experience much more than had been previously suspected. These perceptual mechanisms promote walkability and intuitive navigation, and so they support the urban and civic interactions for which we establish communities and cities in the first place. Therefore, the use of multiple fractals needs to reintegrate with biophilic and traditional architecture in urban design for their proven positive effects on health and well-being. Such benefits include striking reductions in observers’ stress and mental fatigue. Due to their costs to individual well-being, urban performance, environmental quality, and climatic adaptation, this paper recommends that nontraditional styles should be hereafter applied judiciously to the built environment. View Full-Text

Keywords: biophilic design; design-attention; disengagement; engagement; eye-tracking; façades; fractals; interaction-design; neuroscience; public-space; traditional styles; urban design; Visual Attention Software

▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Share and Cite

MDPI and ACS Style

Brielmann, A.A.; Buras, N.H.; Salingaros, N.A.; Taylor, R.P. What Happens in Your Brain When You Walk Down the Street? Implications of Architectural Proportions, Biophilia, and Fractal Geometry for Urban Science. Urban Sci. 2022, 6, 3. https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci6010003

AMA Style

Brielmann AA, Buras NH, Salingaros NA, Taylor RP. What Happens in Your Brain When You Walk Down the Street? Implications of Architectural Proportions, Biophilia, and Fractal Geometry for Urban Science. Urban Science. 2022; 6(1):3. https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci6010003

Chicago/Turabian Style

Brielmann, Aenne A., Nir H. Buras, Nikos A. Salingaros, and Richard P. Taylor. 2022. "What Happens in Your Brain When You Walk Down the Street? Implications of Architectural Proportions, Biophilia, and Fractal Geometry for Urban Science" Urban Science 6, no. 1: 3. https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci6010003

Find Other Styles

Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.

Article Metrics

Abstract views Pdf views Html views

Article Menu

What Happens in Your Brain When You Walk Down the Street? Implications of Architectural Proportions, Biophilia, and Fractal Geometry for Urban Science

Abstract

Share and Cite

Article Metrics

Article Access Statistics

Article Access Map by Country/Region

Further Information

Guidelines

MDPI Initiatives

Follow MDPI