----Noise----
In the days after 9/11 when commercial flights were grounded, people from all over the country commented on how "quiet" it had become. In many of these areas, almost all the aircraft was high-flying--contributing to the background noise and individually identifiable only if you concentrated. A bizarre measure of the impact of that background noise was that many people reported feeling unusually calm and collected during that period. The specifics of the commercial aircraft noise problem have extensive discussion elsewhere and are off-topic here.(foot#1)
City Hall has a Healthy Cities, Healthy Community Initiative, but I couldn't find an explicit mention of noise in it, despite that having been an issue for years: Leafblowers, seemingly never-ending construction activity, traffic. Gone are the days when "quiet resident street" almost seemed redundant. Even during hot spells (such as now), open windows and fans used to be enough to cope, but people are increasingly installing air conditioning because windows need to be shut to reduce the noise. Aside: I don't have A/C, but rather a set of ear plugs and noise-canceling headsets that I cycle through as each become uncomfortable.
Many creative people need significant blocks of time to be effective and productive (Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule). People shift their work schedules to avoid not just interruptions, but noise. For example, at a software development company, some of us did our concentrated work on a late schedule, such as 10pm-4am, and others had a early schedule, for example staring at 5am. Multiple studies on shift work (factory, police ...) have found that going against your biological clock has detrimental health effects, although the biggest ones result from shifting the shift being worked.
Politically, noise is a difficult issue to deal with because (1) people who rise in that hierarchy tend to be those who are invigorated by noise, or at least tolerate it, and (2) their position allows them an environment that reduces noise, such as a closed office versus a cubicle or home office.
----Visual Environment - Nature----
Hospital patients who had a view of nature were found to have better recoveries from surgery than those whose windows faced a brick wall. This 1984 publication ("Resources" below) was one of the inspirations for an ongoing stream of studies about how the presence of nature affects human health. An interesting alternative approach has been to try to measure how much people value having a view of nature, for example, as reflected in real estate prices.
One of the great deficiencies of current Urban Planning ideology is that it views "nature" as something you go to visit--parks, hiking trails...--rather that something that you live within.
Numerous studies have also found nature also provides a quick mental refresher ("Resources" below). Think about your experience with getting up from your desk and walking, and compare doing so in the building's hallway, its parking lot, and a green space such as found on many corporate campuses. Palo Alto's Healthy Cities Initiative misses this aspect: It calls out being out-and-about as being only exercise.
----Visual Environment - Built----
There is an extensive body of research on what makes for a visually appealing commercial/business district, for higher-density residential developments, and for low-density residential areas. Briefly, there needs to be a certain level of structure and order, with compatible variation (in "Resources" below). There are cities where there have been master architects, and places where the architects and their clients want buildings that fit in. Then there are other cities where the architects and their clients want their buildings to stand out in the opposite sense of "outstanding". These go by many names, such as signature building or gateway, but involve the building being out-of-scale (much larger) and of in incompatible design with its surroundings. When I hear an architect--either for the building or the review panel--discuss the overall aesthetics in isolation, I often wonder if anyone verified their credentials. Context is crucial: A swan is a ugly duckling, and an even uglier kitten. It shouldn't take a prolonged, full-throated public outcry to get the basics of design compatibility enforced.
The details of good/bad design are too gargantuan to go into here. Rather I encourage you to think about the effects of that design on those who pass through there: residents, workers, shoppers ... Bad design can be cold and even threatening, making people tense and wanting to hurry away from there, and that tension can be contagious.
The Eichler house design is oriented toward its backyard and presents a largely blank face to the front, with the garage doors the most salient feature. This design discourages spontaneous and other informal interactions with neighbors--its not just that residents are rarely out-front (other than the driveway), but they have little visibility from the house of what might be going on there. This design philosophy was widespread in the 1950s and 1960s, and the undesirable consequences had been widely accepted by the 1980s, and Palo Alto subsequently updated its building design rules to prohibit the worst of these design features.
Recognize that while bad design can squelch interactions between neighbors, good design doesn't guarantee it, but only make it somewhat more likely. This point was driven home when I visited a cousin in another city. Although her house presents a friendly face to the street, her homeowners association rules dictated that the front yards be sterile, useless spaces: It had to be a grass lawn with one tree and flowers allowed only in narrow borders. She wanted to have crocuses (bulbs) in the lawn, but that was forbidden. With no reason for people to linger out-front, the few residents I saw were in their own bubbles: joggers and dog walkers.
A basic problem in achieving good urban design from a visual perspective is that there isn't power to dictate it, but only to somewhat influence it. This is probably a good situation, because if there were the power to dictate, it would likely produce bad designs.
----Urban Design under Assault----
Under the rationale that building more housing is the only priority, various advocacy groups are rejecting the importance of good design on human health. One such group is Bay Area Renters Forum (BARF) of San Francisco that although tiny has somehow achieved prominence, for example an article in the New York Times and a major lawsuit in the East Bay. That article(foot#2) describes the BARF front person Sonja Trauss as "support(ing) all of it (buildings) so long as it is built tall, and soon" and quotes her as saying "You have to support building, even when it's a type of building you hate. Is it ugly? Get over yourself. ..." She describes herself as an anarchist, but sounds like she would be happy with a building style known as "Stalinist".
----Footnotes----
1. For those concerned about the frequency of low-flying commercial aircraft that plague Palo Alto, see Sky Posse Palo Alto. There is a web page to easily report individual problematic flights as they occur: Stop Jet Noise.
2. In Cramped and Costly Bay Area, Cries to Build, Baby, Build, NY Times (tiered subscription), 2016-04-16.
----Resources----
This is a set of links I have collected over the years on the above topics. Some are short articles that give an overview and are also useful for providing the terminology and names that facilitate any followup via web search. Other of the articles provide deeper and more sophisticated discussions.
-- View through a window may influence recovery from surgery by RS Ulrich - Science 1984-04-27; 224(4647):420-1. PDF
Abstract: Records on recovery after cholecystectomy of patients in a suburban Pennsylvania hospital between 1972 and 1981 were examined to determine whether assignment to a room with a window view of a natural setting might have restorative influences. Twenty-three surgical patients assigned to rooms with windows looking out on a natural scene had shorter postoperative hospital stays, received fewer negative evaluative comments in nurses' notes, and took fewer potent analgesics than 23 matched patients in similar rooms with windows facing a brick building wall.
-- How Hospital Gardens Help Patients Heal by Deborah Franklin - Scientific American, 2012-03-01.
-- Living Near Green Spaces Helps You Live Longer, New Study Shows - NBC News, 2016-04-18.
-- Neighborhood greenspace and health in a large urban center by Omid Kardan, Peter Gozdyra, Bratislav Misic, Faisal Moola, Lyle J. Palmer, Tomáš Paus & Marc G. Berman. Scientific Reports 5, Article number: 11610 (Open), Nature.com. 2015-07-09.
Summary: Studies have shown that natural environments can enhance health and here we build upon that work by examining the associations between comprehensive greenspace metrics and health. We focused on a large urban population center (Toronto, Canada)...
-- Scientists have discovered that living near trees is good for your health by Chris Mooney - Washington Post (tiered subscription model), 2015-07-09.
-- Do Dying Trees Lead to More Human Deaths? - PBS NewsHour.
-- How Removing Trees Can Kill You - PBS NewsHour, 2013-06.
-- Human Dimensions of Urban Forestry and Urban Greening. Kathleen L. Wolf, Ph.D., University of Washington, School of Environmental and Forest Science, College of the Environment.
Summary: features research on people's perception and behaviors regarding nature in cities.
-- Researchers find walking in nature provides mental health benefits by Alina Abidi - Stanford Daily, 2015-07-26. "Stanford researchers found that walking in nature, as opposed to walking in urban areas, provides mental health benefits."
Cited article: Nature experience reduces rumination and subgenual prefrontal cortex activation by Gregory N. Bratman, J. Paul Hamilton, Kevin S. Hahn, Gretchen C. Daily, and James J. Gross. PNAS 2015 112 (28) 8567-8572; 2015-06-29 (the official=publication version has later date).
-- New market for developers: homebuyers want view of woods, not large lawns, The University of Michigan press release, 2004-06-28. Links to the cited research itself are broken, but web search finds related studies.
Briefly: The overall view is more important than what is on your property, and "nature" such as woods is more beneficial than lawns. This is a widely held preference. Reflected in real estate values.
-- How Nature Resets Our Minds and Bodies - Adam Alter, The Atlantic, 2013-03.
Summary: The research behind an understanding that natural environments refocus our attention, lessening stress and hastening healing.
-- A "Dose of Nature" for Attention Problems - Well Blog, NYTimes (tiered subscription model), 2008-10-17.
-- Why Do We Love Paris but Hate Frankfurt? A Swiss Author's Six Qualities of Beautiful Cities By Kristin Hohenadel - Slate, 2015-03-06.
Summary: Order, but not excessive order.
Video cited: How to Make an Attractive City by The School of Life - 14 minutes long.
-- Remembering the Human Scale in Walkable City Neighborhoods by F. Kaid Benfield, 2014-10-06.
This article is interesting not just for the observations themselves, but because of who the author is: He is an advocate for Smart Growth who contrasts what motivates that theory with what it produces.
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An abbreviated index by topic and chronologically is available.
----Boilerplate on Commenting----
The Guidelines for comments on this blog are different from those on Town Square Forums. I am attempting to foster more civility and substantive comments by deleting violations of the guidelines.
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