Aesthetics, Well-Being and Health: Essays within Architecture and Environmental Aesthetics

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Aesthetics, Well-being and Health: Essays within Architecture and Environmental Aesthetics, Birgit Cold (ed.), Aldershot, Ashgate, 2001, 322 pp., £45.00 (h/b)

What are the merits of living in areas with perceived architectural and environmental beauty? Do, for example, residents living in such areas enjoy happier and healthier lives than those living in places with no perceived beauty? Herb Gans's (1968) critique of what he referred to as the 'fallacy of physical determinism' suggested that planners and architects have typically paid too much attention to physical upgrading as a way of shaping human behaviour and too little attention to the social and cultural aspects of planning …