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Classic Book Review. Rapoport. (1977). Human Aspects of Urban Form

Literature Review | 2012-01-18 오전 1:35:38 | 조회수 : 6529 | 공개

Rapoport, A. (1977). Human Aspects of Urban Form. Oxford: Pergamon Press.  

During the early 1970s, Environment-Behavior Studies emerged in urban planning field. Amos Rapoport, one of the most influential figures in EBS, proposed that it is socio-cultural factors which generate built forms. He developed conceptual framework to analyze the nature of the interrelation between cultural variability and physical surroundings constructed by different groups of people, by employing cross-cultural comparisons as a major mechanism.
 
In the introduction of Human Aspects of Urban Form, Rapoport distinguishes Environment-Behavior studies from traditional design discipline. EBS is not only distinguishable in that it emphasizes human criteria for design, but it also differs in its stress on the physical environment. Rapoport, furthermore, contends that EBS should be concerned with the systematic study of the mutual interaction of people and their built environment.
 
Rapoport then states that all specific problems and questions in Environment-Behavior studies can be understood in terms of three basic questions of Environment-Behavior relations. More importantly, he proposes that culture plays a major role in all three of these basic questions: 
  1. Which characteristics of people -- as members of the species, as individuals, and as members of various groups ranging from families to societies -- shape their environment?
  2. Which attributes of environments affect what groups of people in which ways, under what circumstances, why and how?
  3. What are the mechanisms that link this two-way interaction of people and environments?
 
The first question involves not only individual’s sensory capacities, but also the physical and social environments to which an individual belongs. Individuals perceive and understand their environment through their senses and give affective responses to it; at the same time, culture as a filter involves in the process of perception, cognition, and evaluation. A particular group of people who share images or cognitive schemata, therefore, affects the way the ideals and environment are organized.
 
The role of culture in the second question follows from group variability. Different groups of people are affected differently by the same attributes of environment; all individuals behave differently in different settings. This implies that the built environment provides cues for behavior appropriate to the settings as defined by culture. Among these culturally defined environments, there exists a number of variability of meanings expressed through their built environments, and dissimilarity of the ways such meanings are expressed and decoded. Likewise, different groups evaluate environmental quality differently, and make a decision on habitat selection, according to their shared values, ideals, images, and schemata. Such habitat selection, according to Rapoport, is also a major effect of environments on people. Also in the third question, culture plays an inescapable role. Rapoport considers the interaction between human and environment in the context of congruence, whereby people try to match their culture, values, and behavior to physical environments. 
 
Those aforementioned questions are carefully approached and discussed throughout this book. In Chapter 1, environment is conceptualized as organization of space, time, meaning, and communication. Once again, Rapoport argues that the organization of these four aspects of environment is the outcome of underlying rules and culture, which reflect differing responses to environmental quality. Urban design is hence defined as a process of consistent choices based on the rules and cultures of a group. This chapter also introduces main concepts that are elaborated in following three chapters: environmental perception, cognition, and evaluation. The stress is put on the “filters” which are, as a mediator between environmental inputs and effects, part of the perceived environment and involve expectations and symbolic meanings. Rapoport also explains filters and the resulting perceived environments in a relation to images, which refer to cognitive structures or schemata that organizes ideal forms.
           
Next three chapters discuss environmental evaluation and preference and its variability of standard; environmental cognition and its relation to design; the importance and nature of environment perception. Whereas these three chapters deal with cities in terms of perceptual inputs, material for cognitive schemata, and evaluative responses, following two chapters accentuate cities as the result of a wide range of social and cultural factors.
 
Chapter 6 examines cities in terms of social, cultural, and territorial variables. Rapoport details the concept of “setting,” and conceptualizes environment as a system of settings within which systems of activities take place. According to him, a setting comprise a milieu with a system of activities, where the milieu and the activities are linked by rules as to what is appropriate and hence permitted or prohibited. These rules, while always specific to setting and situation also vary for different groups and different culture. Rapoport also suggests that this concept of environment as a system of settings apply not only to the dwelling in its larger setting, “the house-settlement systems”, but also to the dwelling itself.
 
In Chapter 7, when discussing symbolic and communicative of aspects of cities, Rapoport advances the concept of “non-verbal communication”, and explains environment as a form of non-verbal communication to suggest the potential for the built environment to transmit meaning. In this chapter, he also tries to conceptualize environment as a cultural landscape. He says that consistent system of choices leads to style, resulting in recognizably different places. These characteristically different places form cultural landscapes, which refers to part of the surface of the earth that has been modified by human and cultural activities. Rapoport also raises the importance of people’s involvement in the environment, and introduces the notion of open-ended design. As design involves different use groups which are highly variable in their needs, it should consider their preferences and notions of environmental qualities, images, and ideals. He also maintains that environments need to be congruent with, and supportive of, the culture, values and needs of a group, and if they are not, they can cause stress, especially for those who are already vulnerable.
 
Before Rapoport’s studies, it was generally accepted that only physical factors could affect built environment; local climate, indigenous materials for buildings, and topography were believed as the most influential determinants on the characteristics of environment. Rapoport, however, argues that culture mediates the effects on architecture of climate, materials, and topography. He also challenges the widespread thought that human is passive factors in shaping one’s environment, by demonstrating human aspects such as worldview, lifestyle, and value have structured and modified built environment.
 
It is now commonsensical that cultures affect built environments, as Rapoport asserts. However, there have been increasing research efforts to examine how such culture makes influences on the selection and development of built environments. Rapoport claims that culture is a theoretical construct and ideational variables, so that it is virtually impossible to link culture to built forms. At the same time, he admits that this abstract concept of culture hampers understanding the interrelation between culture and environments. He then proposes two ways to dismantle culture. First, he views social variables as observable manifestations of culture, and related environments to such social variables as family and kinship structures, social networks, roles, statuses, and social institutions. Second, he uses a particular sequence of increasing specificity going from culture through worldviews and values to lifestyles and activities.
 
Rapoport has employed values as a part of a worldview known as culture, when discussing the sociocultural aspects of Environment-Behavior studies. Although he found the concept of values easier to identify than culture, it was still complex to link to the built environment, at the time of his writing. Thirty decades after the publication of Human Aspect of Urban Form, there have been attempts to relate values to the built environment. Despres (1991)[1] reviewed empirical literature on the meaning of home, in her article “The meaning of home.” This article contains a list of general categories of meaning of home, several of which can be qualified as a value system. In addition, Mazumdar (1994)[2], proposed a socio-architectural approach to examine societal values affecting architecture at a number of levels and through a variety of mechanisms.    
 
In summary, Human Aspects of Urban Form by Amos Rapoport provides a deep insight into the relationships between culture and built form, as well as theoretical constructs and analytical models that successfully integrate the key concepts of culture, worldview, and values into environmental design. He also draws conceptualization on cultural variability by examining culturally specific settings, and employing a wide range of cross-cultural studies. Rapoport, however, was not able to explain how culture affect built environment; he was unable to reach to empirical ground to illustrate his theoretical principles, by depending on published ethnographies and monographs. 

[1]) Despres, C. (1991). “The meaning of home: literature review and directions for future research and theoretical development,” Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, 8, pp.96-115.
[2]) Mazumdar, S. (1994). “Societal values and architecture: A socio-physical model of the interrelationships,” Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, 11:1, pp.66-90.



태그 : 환경심리학, 서평
댓글 : 2개
adaseo   2012-01-19 11:14 [ Modify ]  [ Delete ]

교수님께서 친구신청을 하시다니, 블로그의 수평성에 다시 한번 놀랐습니다. 박사과정 때, 교수님께서 예전 JAPR에 발표하셨던 논문을 열심히 읽었던 기억도 되살아납니다.  ^_^ 작년 대구 IAPS에서 인사드린 적 있었는데 기억하실지 모르겠습니다. 작성된 리뷰는 제가 박사과정 첫 학기때 쓴 것입니다. 최근, 제 연구의 정체성에 대해 심하게 고민하다가 초심을 기억하고자 다시 꺼내 읽어 보았습니다. 앞으로 환경심리학의 클래식들을 다시 리뷰해 볼 생각입니다. House Form and Culture 도 포함시키겠습니다. :)

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jpchoi   2012-01-19 10:52 [ Modify ]  [ Delete ]
Rapoport 교수님의 역작이지요. 너무 좋은 책입니다. 엣날 공부할 때 열심히 읽었던 기억이 되살아납니다. 제 박사 논문에 큰 도움이 되었던 책이지요. 라포포트 교수님의 House Form and Culutre라는 다른 책과 함께.
리뷰글 감사 드립니다. 이왕이면 번역된 리뷰를 볼 수 있으면 더욱 좋겠다는 생각도 해 봅니다^^

- 서울대 건축학과 최재필 교수였습니다
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