Are cities on the edge of a ‘neuroscience revolution’?
The last decade has seen a staggering rise in the application of neuroscience expanding from health care to explore how we work, live and even love in great detail.
As applied to cities some of this work confirms what we already knew – for example green space is (very) good for us – and the importance of confirmation through this kind of evidence should not be understated. But some of it takes us into quite new territory.
Work has claimed to discover the ‘source’ of creativity, how ideas or decisions are made by our brains before we are aware of them, questioning free will, and at the more radical end suggesting we could ‘upload’ our minds to future computers.
Clearly such ideas are not without controversy, and have spawned the field of ‘neuroethics’, hotly debating questions that have in reality been with us for a long time.
New possibilities for cities
Looking at cities through this lens is however a vital and new innovation, applying the techniques of neuroscience to that most complex and important of human creations.
Colin Ellard writing in The Guardian set out how the University of Waterloo has created sophisticated virtual cities which can be experienced immerssively by wearing 3D headsets, with reactions tracked by sensors. This allows locations to be altered by the flick of a programming switch helping understand how different planning layouts affect us.
There is perhaps no substitute for the real thing, particularly where experiencing the city is concerned and portable EEG headsets have been used in several studies looking at how the brain experiences different ‘live’ urban environments.
The Neuroscience for Cities Playbook
A solidly practical yet creative application is the Neuroscience for Cities Playbook. The Future Cities Centre (now the Connected Places Catapult), working with Centric Lab and University College London launched a ‘Neuroscience for Cities Playbook’ in 2018.
The aim was to help cities apply ideas from neuroscience to planning and policy decisions. It promoted a three-step approach of: identifying which environmental factors are having the biggest mental and physical impacts; what the unintended consequences of urban trends like ‘sprawl’ are; and what tools neuroscience can bring to the table to help cities deal with these.
There is a richness of activity taking place which is currently almost unknown to those who plan and manage our cities. It would be a very valuable exercise to collate the data from applications of nueroscience to cities and assess their wider impacts – perhaps a future ‘neurocities’ study or seminar?
Neuroscience is not the answer to all the challenges cities face, and a blended approach utilising the many psychological and other tools available is likely to get the best results.
But despite the different reactions neuroscience can inspire, what is also clear is that it is set to become a central tool for any city that is serious about improving the lives of their citizens, their environment and economy. In a few years’ time we will question why anyone ever thought differently.
