ABSTRACT
We are witnessing a fall in the social acceptance of the scientific representation of urban realities and a generic claim for more human environments. This section is concerned with trying to get to the roots of why we seem to have found difficulty accommodating authentic, routine human life and experience into the way that we shape our urban environments and making some suggestions about how things might be improved. We will first try to do this by taking a look at the conception of human-environment relations that underpins the prevailing Western view of how we see ourselves in relation to our urban surroundings. The central claim here is that in Western culture we remain in the grip of a world view that has brought about a largely subconscious acceptance of a particular concept of human-environment relations that has tended to privilege a rational and instrumental attitude to the environment as a primarily technical and aesthetic product. Whatever benefits they have undoubtedly brought in terms of technological advance and economic prosperity, for example, the dominant influence of the doctrines of positivism and its Enlightenment origins is now widely thought to be at least partly responsible for a preoccupation with rationalizing modes of thinking, a bias towards quantitative considerations and a subjugation of experiential and emotional dimensions of place experience. This can be overcome, however, and we will talk about some of the philosophical, theoretical and methodological implications to support our argument for a humanistic and socially inclusive approach to urban design where the emotional expression and psychological functioning that make up the life patterns of individuals and communities have primacy.
