A few years ago, I connected psychological theories of human needs to placemaking practice. (See Principles of human needs placemaking.)
In that essay, I condensed human needs theories of Abraham Maslow, other psychologists, and the environmental psychology field into four categories: physiological (i.e., food, health, shelter and other necessities of life), relational (connections to other people) and self-actualization (the need to 'be yourself') and the environmental need to be in aesthetically pleasing and green spaces.
As I've delved into creative placemaking over the last few years, I realize that those categories alone didn't answer two questions of human motivation: Why are people content to be passive recipients of arts experiences? Why do we get bored?
Because people need novelty in their lives. Most people who do not have extreme compulsive or obsessive disorders seek to know something new, do something different, or even experience the same things in new ways throughout our lives.
But not everyone is looking for novelty all the time. If that were the case, humans would be constantly restless beings, unable to maintain long-term relationships or live in a single community for many years. There certainly wouldn't be zoning and subdivision regulations. These provide order and stability. In other words, they respond to the human need for security.
Psychologists had identified security as a principal human need, and I made a mistake by lumping it into the other categories in my earlier essay. (I guess it was because of my desire, not need, to make simple charts with four compass points.)
So now I see six principal human needs and their implications for placemaking practice:
- Physiological -- Food, shelter, health, and other necessities for physical well-being
- Placemaking implications: Grocery stores, health facilities, housing
- Security -- The need to feel more safe and secure in an environment. In other words, security is about minimizing risk. A closely related idea is convenience: the more distant or inaccessible something attractive seems, the more the person risks in pursuing it.
- Placemaking implications: Land use regulations that are fairly and consistently applied, presence of security, safe streets and public areas, safe neighbhorhoods, navigational aides such as signage and wayfinding strategies
- Relational -- The need to build and maintain respectful and loving relationships with others
- Placemaking implications: Clubs or associations; spaces where communities of many sizes can gather, spaces that feel "owned" by communities, "third places" -- cafes, malls, etc. -- where individuals can gather to build and strengthen connections.
- Environmental -- The need to be in aesthetically pleasing and natural environments.
- Placemaking implications: Attractively designed built environments, parks and open spaces, public art.
- Self-actualization -- The need to develop and express one's interests and creativity.
- Placemaking implications: Schools, places where expressions of different interests are tolerated or welcome (such as festivals), regulatory and social environments that provide fair and equitable opportunities for success.
- Novelty -- The need to learn and have new experiences.
- Placemaking implications: Places that are different from other places; spaces that offer participants opportunities to see something new, or something familiar in new ways; theaters, museums and galleries; pedestrian-oriented spaces (because it easier to see new things or people while walking than while driving); opportunities for people to do something new or differently.
These needs can be complementary. That's why the communities and areas that offer an abundance of placemaking elements tend to be among the most expensive places to live. (As in the earlier essay, I'm determining "need" by what people are willing to pay to get the need. Traditional economists might say that there are no real needs other than those for physical health. But this idea assumes that mental and emotional well-being is either irrelevant or a luxury. I suspect that these types of economists don't make very good party guests.)
But these needs are often in conflict, which is why placemaking can be so challenging. In fact, the six needs could be organized into three continuums:
- Physiological versus environmental: For most of human history, creating more opportunities to meet physiological needs has meant destroying or damaging aesthetic or natural environments. Open space gets cleared to make new housing, trees and grasslands get bulldozed for road widenings. Even though adaptive reuse and environmental protections have slowed down the destruction of natural environments, proposed changes in the built environment also create tensions.
For example, a developer is willing to build a new hospital in a low-income community, but only if the city clears some architecturally interesting old buildings on the site. Building security fences would reduce operating costs for the hospital and widening the roads would make it easier for ambulances to get to and from the hospital, but it would make the area less welcoming to residents. - Relational versus self-actualization: This, in short, is the tension between connecting to and doing for others versus doing for oneself. While and individual can find comfort, protection and esteem in being part of groups that values him or her, that person also has to sacrifice some freedoms to live peacefully within the group. The person may feel unable to travel or speak or engage others as freely as he or she wants, especially if that person is considered a caregiver in the relationship. This has subtle but profound effects on placemaking.
As Alexander and others point out in A Pattern Language, healthy communities offer a mix of spaces: public (such as parks), semi-public (corridors or districts that feel unwelcome to 'outsiders') and private spaces (houses and backyards). In each type of place, there are different expectations for how individuals should relate to and care for one another. On a regional or national scale, communities tend to be oriented towards self-actualization ('artsy' areas of cities or the Las Vegas Strip) and others toward relational behavior (residential districts, districts centered on religious or social institutions.) Edges, districts and landmarks can play important roles in alerting participants to the tilt of those places. - Security versus novelty: In the United States, population shifts between 1910 and 2010 saw an interesting circular trend. In the early- and mid-20th century, large numbers of people moved from dense urban areas to relatively low-density suburban areas. Telecommunications and transportation technology made it possible for people to live farther away from one another, and many did. Despite the baby boom of the 1940s and 1950s as well as surges of immigration, cities such as New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and St. Louis had smaller populations in 1996 than they did in 1960.* With Internet technology and improvements in transportation technology, one would expect even more people to disperse. But in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, there was a significant shift the other way. Cities grew again, and small communities added townhouses, multifamily housing, light rail, as well as other investments to make the kind of places found in city neighborhoods.
There are a lot of reasons for these population shifts, but consider this: There were enormous social and economic changes in the United States between 1910 and 1990 in American cities. New immigrants and African-American migrants from older southern states were making cities more diverse than ever. As ethnic groups grew in population, they also demanded a greater say in policy and placemaking. Civil rights demonstrations and civil unrest actions both tended to happen in cities. A person who lived his whole life in an industrial area between the jazz age and the MTV erea might have complained too much noise and pollution in the 1920s, then about blight and desolation in the 1980s. If TV shows are a good barometer of popular culture, then the suburbs of the 1950s and 1960s offered order, quiet and convenience. Even I Love Lucy's Ricky and Lucy moved "out to the country," even though he was a New York City nightclub entertainer.
But by the time Seinfeld's Jerry and his group and the six buddies on Friends lived in New York City in the 1990s, it was a relatively safe and inviting -- albeit still quirky -- place. In reality, leaders of major cities learned from the Walt Disney Company about how to create dense environments that could offer novelty while maintaining a sense of security. As managers of dense environments worked to make them appear safer and more orderly, more people visited and moved there. Dense environments with many connections offer more opportunity to experience something new.
The three tensions described above are the most significant, but not the only ones among the elements of human needs. For example, controversies about streetscape design guidelines could reflect a tension between self-actualization and security. A conflict over a new supermarket that might draw in low-income residents to a wealthy area could be a tension between the desire of some to better meet their physiological needs and of others to maintain what they see as existing social order.
Although placemakers try to seek the best balance possible among these elements, there is no central point that meets everyone's needs perfectly. And it is likely that there is no district or neighborhood that is perfect for anyone all the time; what someone needs changes as he or she ages, has new experiences and new relationships. The best places are like tables made up of smaller places, each with distinct tilts.
Sources:
*U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1999, http://www.census.gov/prod/99pubs/99statab/sec31.pdf
Christopher Alexander, et. al., A Pattern Language
William H. Frey, "Demographic Reversal: Cities Thrive, Suburbs Sputter," Brookings Institution State of Metropolitan America, Number 56 of 62, June 29, 2012 http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/06/29-cities-suburbs-frey
