From Neolithic monuments that awe to ‘playground casinos’ that empty wallets, Ellard argues that a scientific understanding of how our surroundings affect us must be the foundation on which we build the cities and homes of tomorrow.
Places of the Heart
The Psychogeography of Everyday Life
Our surroundings can powerfully affect our thoughts, emotions, and physical responses, whether we’re awed by the Grand Canyon or Hagia Sophia, panicked in a crowded room, soothed by a walk in the park, or tempted in casinos and shopping malls. In Places of the Heart, Colin Ellard explores how our homes, workplaces, cities, and nature—places we escape to and can’t escape from—have influenced us throughout history, and how our brains and bodies respond to different types of real and virtual space. As he describes the insight he and other scientists have gained from new technologies, he assesses the influence these technologies will have on our evolving environment and asks what kind of world we are, and should be, creating.
Library of Science Book Club selection
Discover magazine “What to Read” selection
Book Riot “Small Press Book to Read” selection
Ebook
- ISBN
- 9781942658016
Paperback
- ISBN
- 9781942658009
Colin Ellard discusses Places of the Heart on Science Friday and Here & Now.
Read more from Places of the Heart at Science Friday, Slate, and Aeon.
Find out what it’s like to participate in Colin Ellard’s walking tours/research projects, “exploring the relationship between psychology and urban design using the tools of neuroscience,” in the Toronto Star.
From Mumbai to Lake Victoria: Colin Ellard talks about the places that have left an “indelible emotional mark” on CBC Arts; discusses the psychological cost of boring places with New York magazine; investigates the psychology of scary places with CHCH-TV; and writes about the Pokémon Go craze and brain health at Quartz.
Listen to Colin Ellard discuss “how your city’s streets affect your mental health” on HuffPost Live; the science behind psychogeography on ABC Radio National’s Sunday Extra; the “psychology behind urban politeness” on Monocle magazine’s The Urbanist; our environment’s effect on physical and mental health on HumanLab; and the importance of library design with the Ontario Library Association’s Open Shelf.
Colin Ellard, who works at the intersection of neuroscience and architectural and environmental design, is the author of Places of the Heart: The Psychogeography of Everyday Life and You Are Here: Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon. He has published scientific work in international journals in North America, Europe, and Asia for the past twenty-five years and has also contributed to the public discussion of environmental psychology through his work with museums and the media. A cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Waterloo and director of its Urban Realities Laboratory, Ellard lives in Kitchener, Ontario.
visit author page »Praise for Places of the Heart
Meshing recent findings with thoughtful appraisals of their implications, Ellard looks at spaces and the awe, lust, boredom, affection or anxiety that they trigger. He is richly insightful, particularly on digital encroachments into the experience of place.
— Nature
A powerful argument for the paramount importance of our daily surroundings. . . . This book offers readers a deeper appreciation of how architectural and environmental design can affect human well-being. Ellard provides the scientific backing to affirm what we intuitively know: that designing and building better surroundings can have tangible effects on our health and happiness.
Aren’t architects and urban planners trained to design buildings and cities? Why should a psychologist have a say in this? Because Ellard brings tools to the design board that should help ensure more positive responses to urban environment, from a mundane alleyway to an awe-inspiring cathedral or city hall. . . . Places of the Heart should stimulate debate about how our cities are shaped and how they shape us.
Ellard shows that simple distinctions between nature and culture tend to collapse where many modern technologies are concerned. . . . Many of the trends with which Ellard engages—such as virtual reality technology that would allow individuals to live in a curated, mediated, personalized, and highly commodified bubble—sound as if they were pulled from the pages of Ray Bradburyesque science fiction.
If you care about your city and your happiness, read every page of this fascinating book. Places of the Heart offers a thrilling journey through the pathways of our cities and the human mind. This is no flight of fancy. It’s an evidence-based exploration of how the places we inhabit change our minds and bodies. Colin Ellard is one of the world’s foremost thinkers on the neuroscience of urban design. Here he offers an entirely new way to understand our cities—and ourselves.
— Charles Montgomery, author of Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design
This beautifully written book grabs the reader from the start, with personal stories from the author’s life interwoven with history, archaeology, technology, and design.
— Esther M. Sternberg, MD, author of Healing Spaces: The Science of Place and Well-Being