ABSTRACT
Just as the human brain is primed to find faces, favors symmetry, and enjoys ordered complexity, it runs on narrative. How we see our world and how we see ourselves ultimately involves a story. Narrative is the unusual ability of the human mind to create stories and, in the process, find multiple ways of linking to the environment and securing a place in it. Biologists consider our adeptness at coming up with stories highly adaptive. While we share many other traits with other animals, no other creature has the capacity to create and continually elaborate its own story. This chapter reveals why narrative matters so much for us in the built environment with case studies that illustrate story-like sequencing in the layout of a famed Italian Renaissance garden versus the random arrangement of buildings and parking lots at an entry intersection to a U.S. town, which has troubled residents for decades.
