Квартирный вопрос может испортить людей не только морально, как говорил Воланд, но и психологически, что интуитивно понимают покупатели жилья, жаждущие потолков повыше. Среда нашего городского обитания простирается за пределы квартиры, но и там нас поджидают модификаторы настроения и самочувствия. Так, мимо безликих стерильных зданий мы стремимся пройти побыстрее, а тем, кому из окна больницы видны деревья и трава, требуется меньше времени для выздоровления. Колин Эдвард рассказывает, как архитектура воздействует на многие аспекты нашего поведения и как это позволяет объяснить и даже предсказать поведение людей в хаосе повседневной жизни.

Sadly it turns out "psychogeography" is not interesting to me. I'm sure this book would be of more interest to other readers. Note it is more academic (more dense, more footnoted) than advertised. ( )

Neuroscientist Colin Ellard explores the ways in which the human mind responds to the various environments we move through in our lives, from forests to urban streets to the insides of buildings.

It's a potentially fascinating topic, but I'm afraid the book itself didn't engage me quite as much as I'd hoped. It's a little dry, and in places somewhat repetitive. It didn't help, I don't think, that I was expecting more of an examination of specific environments, how they're designed, how we respond to those designs, and how human psychology can or should be taken into account by architects or urban planners. There is some of that, certainly, but on the whole the subject matter is much more abstract, and much more focused on brains than on places. Also, the author places a little too much emphasis on his own research using VR to simulate environments like the interior of houses, and I don't think the details of that are quite as interesting as he thinks they are.

Still, it's not bad, even if it's not quite what I was hoping for. I did appreciate Ellard's thoughtful discussion, towards the end of the book, of the ways in which modern technology, such as smartphones and the emerging Internet of Things, can affect our experiences of the physical world around us in both positive and negative ways. ( )

I received this as an Early Review book. It was fractured and difficult to follow. Also did not seem to uncover any "psychogeogreography" other than that places, shapes and things in ones environment have meaning and contain memory which I think most people understand. ( )

(an Early Reviewer selection)

Six-word summation: Interesting concept falls short of promise.

Extended comments:

The premise of the book--namely, that human beings are affected by the built spaces in which they live and move, and that those effects can be studied and described--attracted me. I have always tried to remember that every structure I see around me, no matter how ugly, represents what somebody at some time thought was a good idea; but the fact is that many of them are and maybe always were antithetical to human physical and psychological comfort.

However, I bogged down with the reading of the book and was unable to finish it. I got to page 160 out of 226 (followed by backmatter)--that's about 70 percent--and couldn't make myself go further. So this is no better than a partial review.

Normally when I abandon a book I don't think it's fair to write a review at all, but in this case I have an Early Reviewer commitment to fulfill, albeit belatedly. I won't rate it in stars, though, because that does require completion. So please take this as a limited review based on a partial reading; it's possible that the last 66 pages would have left me with a different impression.

Why couldn't I push on through? It wasn't that some of the ideas seemed too off-the-wall for me, even if they were, or that some explanations seemed contrived to fit a theory and failed to take reasonable alternatives into account, although those things were part of it.

It was the writing.

Consider this 83-word prodigy:

"The burgeoning new field of neuroeconomics, for example, is largely founded on the notion that a human being's behavior only follows logical principles so far and that a fully nuanced understanding of how we decide what to do must also take into account our peculiar status as a biological thinking machine, built to survive by means of the principles of natural selection, and subject to biases of various kinds that, though they may not conform to pure logic, have probably encouraged reproductive success." (page 19)

Or this, weighing in at 84:

"There is little doubt that the impulse to build large, expensive structures whose size, might, and decoration far exceed their functions as buildings springs in part from the same kinds of motivations that cause birds and other animals to build elaborate structures in an attempt to woo mates or that cause the largest members of a social group of animals to achieve social dominance while rarely needing to use teeth or claws to defend their right to occupy the top of a dominance hierarchy." (page 159)

Tell me those don't awaken your inner editor.

I'm no slouch with respect to long sentences and complex sentence structure myself--attentively grammatical, to be sure, but admittedly a bit of a trial to read; however, they seldom survive a first draft. On rereading I usually find that I can break them down into two or even three shorter sentences without any loss to the sense or flow or interrelationships of the parts. In my opinion, this type of intervention ought to have been high on the priority list of the editor; but of course I don't know what the manuscript looked like before the editor laid a hand on it.

These two more or less random examples illustrate what sounds to me like stuffy and pretentious writing, with an emphasis on showy language and overblown rhetoric--and this remark comes from someone who likes academic writing, leans toward that style herself, and as an editor prefers to work with it. This document made all my editorial sensors twitch.

At some point early on, I said facetiously that it was almost as if the author had been handed a thousand vocabulary cards and promised points for every one he worked in.

Style of delivery aside, I had issues with the content based on its own internal logic. Some assertions and apparent conclusions struck me as incompletely thought through. The author offers hypotheses that lead to his predetermined conclusions and does not appear to consider any others. For instance, in a chapter called "Boring Places," he describes a building in an urban downtown block whose external design on one side consists of a long, blank wall. It's boring. People hurry past it. There's nothing to linger for or look at. He cites an analyst's observation that passersby on the sidewalk speed up when they pass a featureless facade. But wait. In an earlier chapter he talks about how we are constitutionally wired to seek safety over exposure--a wall at our backs and a secure place from which we can see danger approaching: prospect and refuge. A long blank wall offers noplace to hide or withdraw into--no protection. Wouldn't you rush on by? I would. But the author seems not to remember his own earlier discussion.

Many interesting and even engaging ideas are presented here, such as a connection between lack of education and lack of architectural aesthetics, for one, and the pervasive influence of Walt Disney on our culture, for another. He describes virtual environments and "sentient homes" that he finds appealing and that I think are creepy. At some point I began to wonder if he had an interest in selling them.

Well before the end, however, I lost patience with the airless, labored prose. I can't help speculating that, as with far too many other books, the author ran out of steam a little too soon and rushed his book into print when what it really needed was a little time to cool and then one more rewrite from front to back. An editor ought to have told him so. But that's not my task, and so I concluded that I'd given it long enough. I hurried on past the wall.

(not rated)