Can the built environment influence human behaviour?
In the post-WWII era , most architects and planners would have answered that question with an emphatic “YES”. Many decades and some failures later most would probably answer that the built environment is one of many factors influencing behaviour for good or ill. The Scandinavian countries, together with Holland have been strikingly successful in creating new settlements which enjoy social cohesiveness, low crime and which are respected by their citizens. But these countries work hard at consultation, have low income differentials, high taxation and high social provision. Conviviality is high on their official agendas. British authorities opted against rebuilding many of the bombed-out rows of pre-war terraced houses in cities like London and Birmingham. Instead, the government, planners and architects embraced large-scale public housing projects. Through the 1960s and early ’70s, single-use, single-income-group estates of “point” and “slab” blocks were constructed, nominally inspired b
