Planning Pool

Nola-Kate Seymoar, social psychologist and President and CEO of Sustainable Cities, spoke today about the psychology of change. She began her talk by addressing three elements that contribute to human behavioral change: structure, process and attitude.

Creative Commons photo by ZebulaDesign

She argues that focusing on the structure part of this model (which includes factors such as built form, financial instruments, policies, and regulations) will yield the most ‘success’ in term of encouraging behavioral change. That said, process and attitude are critical in their own right as well as in terms of the role they play in informing the structural part of this equation.

Of particular interest to me was Nola-Kate’s discussion about the attitude dimension. She explains that humans are emotional creatures who respond … Continue Reading

Creative commons photo by Martin LeBar.

Bill Reed, Principle of the Integrative Design Collaborative, began his lecture by talking about the problematic structure of the English language and how this has influenced the way english-speaking cultures conceptualize nature and approach development. Specifically, the use of object verbs and subject verbs causes us to describe and ultimately understand elements of the world in isolation as opposed to in relation to other elements. While the topic of  language wasn’t the theme of this workshop, it set the stage for examining ‘Living System Design,’ which is an integrated design approach that philosophically and practically combines human development with natural ecosystems.

Framing his discussion about this integrative design approach, Reed spoke to the consequences of contemporary ideas … Continue Reading