Santa Marta’s painted houses in Rio De Janiero, Brazil’s most famous favela. credit: Culture Trip

Communities are often defined by the space they inhabit. In Brazil, for example, informal housing settlements are known as favelas — a term that was used to describe displaced colonial soldiers in the 1800s. Upper-class neighborhoods are known as asfalto — literally translated as “asphalt.” As the name implies, the architecture and quality of housing construction in upper-class neighborhoods are far beyond that in the favelas. While each community's economic and cultural differences are seemingly innumerable, there is one common thread between them: both were planned by a human mind.

The brain is undoubtedly the most complex organ in the human body. It is responsible for memory, speech, motor functions, processing sensory information, regulating emotions, and so much more. And while scientists have been studying the brain for thousands of years, neuroscientists have only recently begun dissecting how the brain responds to the built environment. One study shows that architecture often reveals a human face within itself, a phenomenon driven by an instinctual desire to find similarity in the world. Another study showed that the forebrain’s need for repetitiveness is what makes fractal patterns in both architecture and nature appear “beautiful.” These studies share in common that they show how the brain’s desire for space, survival, and pleasure drives inequality in our neighborhoods and communities.

In short, these three desires are central to our approach to everything from city planning to ending poverty and homelessness. That is why it is paramount for residents, planners, developers, policymakers, and community advocates to understand how the brain interprets the built environment. Without this knowledge, it will be impossible to build more inclusive cities and address issues such as affordable housing, homelessness, and poverty.

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The Major Players

The parts of the brain that are primarily responsible for our response to the built environment are the “midbrain” and “hindbrain” — more commonly referred to together as the “primal brain.” These areas regulate the body’s fight-or-flight response and our emotional reaction to stimuli.

This part of the brain is the oldest and likely developed its habits during the Pleistocene epoch, as neurology professor Anjan Chaterjee argues in his book The Aesthetic Brain: How We Evolved to Desire Beauty and Enjoy Art. The Pleistocene epoch began approximately 2.7 million years ago and ended with the most recent Ice Age. During this time, Chaterjee argues the primal human brain began to associate the savanna and its openness with safety and security. Over the millennia, this response became subconscious and now presents itself in contemporary city planning and urban design, Chatterjee says.

Today, neighborhoods that are considered safe often share similar characteristics of savannas. They offer a wide view of the horizon; the growth that is within view is familiar, easily recognizable, and predictable. These characteristics apply to both the land and its inhabitants. There are also scouts — both in the form of formal police departments and neighborhood watch groups — to help enforce the regularity that residents expect.

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Feelings and Experience of a City

Once the expectations for a community’s space are defined, its architecture begins to take shape. The development tends to follow a natural order and often mimics nature itself with its use of predictable patterns such as fractals. While aesthetically pleasing, these patterns also underwrite NIMBYism by excluding new pieces once the pattern has been set.

Vitruvius wrote in the 1st Century B.C. that the three pillars of architecture are strength, utility, and beauty. Over time, architects and city planners modernized the mantra to become “use, form, and beauty.” As Don Ruggles argues in his book Beauty, Neuroscience & Architecture, what we know as “beautiful” results from our biological and social evolution.

“Our iconic works of art and architecture are often just intuitive variations of nature’s patterns around us and within us,” he wrote.

Ruggles says fractals, when used in architecture, “offer a repetitive rhythm that is directly related to our biological structure thus the harmony one senses in viewing fractal geometries is one of the patterns that spark a sense of pleasure and declaration of beauty.” He cites research by Ary Goldberg, a cardiology professor at Harvard Medical School, that found our body responds to fractal stimuli by showing signs of relaxation and decreased heart rate to support his argument.

Photo by Elizabeth Cullen on Unsplash

In practice, comfort and regularity are why many city planners consider how parcels of land look when compared to one another alongside how buildings function to create a community. The approach city planners choose is often determined by the social context and what is considered “formal housing” in a given area.

For example, high-income neighborhoods often have view plane ordinances, restrictive zoning codes, and cost-increasing building ordinances to protect neighborhood aesthetics. Meanwhile, city plans for low-income neighborhoods often privilege building height and density over other community considerations. In effect, these decisions are what can make two people experience the same city in radically different ways. High-income neighborhood residents often feel safer because there are fewer incumbrances within their view plane while those in low-income neighborhoods feel the opposite.

At the same time, arbitrary distinctions between “formal” and “informal” housing are key drivers in the affordability crisis many cities are experiencing. Zoning codes across the country are being left untouched as new and creative housing solutions seemingly crop up by the minute. For example, many zoning codes do not allow for accessory dwelling units (ADU), which can both offer equity advantages to single-family property and provide housing opportunities for people in need.

Building Inclusive Environments

Housing policy and city planning can work together to build inclusive environments by first recognizing that our brains are hardwired to seek out threats and pleasures in the world. That means our instincts will either lead us away from perceived danger or toward some associated reward. Therefore, how “threat” and “pleasure” are socially defined will influence how policymakers address the issue.

Many property owners identified alternative housing solutions or perceived low-income housing are two of the most common “threats” to their property values, according to a study by Redfin. However, the same study found that new developments of low-income housing did not have a statistically significant impact on property values. In one case, the difference in sale price between units sold near new low-income housing was less than $1,000 below that of units located far away from similar housing.

Instead of seeing people who earn less money as threats, communities need to see economic diversity as a strength. It means reshaping the way poverty and housing are discussed in this country. It also means leaders should empower people to embrace solutions rather than fight change.

The UX Collective donates US$1 for each article published on our platform. This story contributed to World-Class Designer School: a college-level, tuition-free design school focused on preparing young and talented African designers for the local and international digital product market. Build the design community you believe in.