Intuitive Cities: Urban Design for Pre-Reflective Living

John Dewey (1934) observed that the eye implicitly sees possibilities of movement even in “lines and different relations of lines [that] have become subconsciously charged with all the values that result from what they have done . . . in our every contact with the world about us” (p. 101). With related thoughts, the environmental psychologists Rachel and Stephen Kaplan (1989) have proposed that aesthetic appraisals of a setting reflect “a very rapid (albeit unconscious) assessment of what it is possible to do in the setting” (p. 37). Thus while aesthetics tends to be undervalued—while, for example, many regard aesthetically pleasing design as desirable but ultimately dispensable—aesthetic experience, as S. Kaplan (1987) urged, “is not the reflection of a whim that people exercise when they are not otherwise occupied.” It appears rather “to constitute a guide to human behavior that has far-reaching consequences” (p. 26). Aesthetics can even be a matter of life and death: Aesthetic qualities of environments have health consequences, and organisms deprived of stimulating environments sometimes lose interest in life and die. In this paper, I will focus on how the aesthetics of architecture, parks and other built environments appeals to the pre-reflective mind. Drawing on the work of pragmatic philosophers, phenomenologists and psychologists, I will start by establishing that human experience is largely composed of pre-reflective doings and that these doings can legitimately be called “intelligent,” even though they involve little conscious thought. Next I will discuss aesthetic perception and how people’s movements within urban settings are almost unconsciously guided by it. Then, using the pioneering work of Jacobs (1961), Newman (1972), Whyte (1980) and Berleant (1988), I will examine how implicitly recognized public-private boundaries cultivate different patterns of social contact, affecting not only security, but also social inclusiveness. I will conclude by talking about the breadth of the approaches advocated in this paper, but also the limitations. I will endeavor to show, for example, that aesthetic design on both a local and large scale can cultivate social arrangements that facilitate certain forms of political activism. At the same time, however, aesthetic theory can but poorly give formulaic prescriptions on how to better design urban spaces. What it can do is help designers and policy makers better understand the material with which they are working and therewith help them make more informed decisions.