Places of the Heart: The Psychogeography of Everyday Life

ISBN: 1942658001

Author: Ellard, Colin

Condition: Used

Library of Science Book Club selectionDiscover magazine What to Read selectionA really great book. IRA FLATOW, Science FridayOne of the finest science writers Ive ever read. Los Angeles TimesEllard has a knack for distilling obscure scientific theories into practical wisdom. New York Times Book Review[Ellard] mak[es] even the most mundane entomological experiment or exegesis of psychological geekspeak feel fresh and fascinating. NPRColin Ellard is one of the worlds foremost thinkers on the neuroscience of urban design. Here he offers an entirely new way to understand our citiesand ourselves. CHARLES MONTGOMERY, author of Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban DesignOur surroundings can powerfully affect our thoughts, emotions, and physical responses, whether were awed by the Grand Canyon or Hagia Sophia, panicked in a crowded room, soothed by a walk in the park, or tempted in casinos and shopping malls. In Places of the Heart, Colin Ellard explores how our homes, workplaces, cities, and natureplaces we escape to and cant escape fromhave influenced us throughout history, and how our brains and bodies respond to different types of real and virtual space. As he describes the insight he and other scientists have gained from new technologies, he assesses the influence these technologies will have on our evolving environment and asks what kind of world we are, and should be, creating.Colin Ellard is the author of You Are Here: Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon, but Get Lost in the Mall. A cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Waterloo and director of its Urban Realities Laboratory, he lives in Kitchener, Ontario.