Cognitive responses to urban environments: behavioral responses in lab and field conditions

Urban design context continually influences cognition and behavior and shapes human responses for pedestrians. Researchers have studied established the role of context well (Sussman and Hollander 2015; Robinson and Pallasmaa 2015; Zeisel et al. 2003; Wells et al. 2007), but less is known about how variations in the built environment impact behavior performance. The book, Cognitive Architecture: Designing for How We Respond to the Built Environment (Sussman and Hollander 2015), argues that a set of four architectural principles might explain impacts on human mental states. This study uses those four principles to provide a framework to empirically test the relationship between variations in the built environment and behavior performance using a go–no-go task. The findings suggest that context matters and the paper offers key implications for urban design theory and practice.