At Nottingham, we follow a people-first approach to design

and we understand places as ecosystems we share with other species.

We are emotional beings, our bodies respond to the stimuli of the environment we are in and this can have a direct impact on our health. We tend to behave according to this stimuli input. It is important to achieve places with proportions and scales that make people feel comfortable, safe and welcomed.

Some design features can promote changes in routines and behaviours. For example, if walking and cycling routes are interesting and fun, and offer a range of experiences with different colours, sounds, smells and textures, people - especially children - will be more inclined to walk, cycle or skate, as journeys are more interesting.

Individual and social identities are developed in part by the local environment. People who feel they belong to a place are more likely to develop more positive attitudes towards it and their neighbours.

Places should allow residents to develop regular routines that create personal and collective memories associated with life in the neighbourhood. This allows people to add social meaning and value to their local places, creating local history through their own communal life experiences.

When people have a common interest in a place, they also have a greater sense of environmental responsibility. This, in turn, helps to consolidate community groups and develop local leadership and social resilience.

Good Placemaking can give neighbours an opportunity to care for their neighbourhood and to develop communal relationships.

Environmental psychology research showed that trying to focus on what motivates humans might bring us closer to a sense of well-being and personal growth. Some fundamental primal human needs can be addressed by design:

• Freedom to move confidently and safely

• Develop awareness of the seasons

• Create a mental map of the place so that it is easy to understand and navigate

• Develop a sense of community and belonging

Place psychology is complex and there is a vast field of expertise studying it but primarily, we become naturally attached to our places because these provide us with what we need to survive: refuge, food, safety. Once our basic needs are satisfied, we go onto developing emotional attachment with places, especially where we have invested effort or where we had developed memories.

New development can be perceived as a threat to our own identities because if a place changes, we might change. However, development can also offer an opportunity to deliver on the various aspects of place psychology during the design and planning process and beyond, here are some examples:

Home Psychology

Our home is our safety net, it is the primal place of refuge, it is our comfort zone, where we go when we feel sick, sad or anxious.

Our home is fundamental to our happiness and belonging to a community gives us opportunities to grow and develop.

Good design can help individual and social development by introducing simple design solutions that trigger human instincts in positive ways.

Our home is where we spend most of the time, it is the most personal space where we can develop a sense of achievement, pride and belonging. Having adequate space to carry out our daily routines can have a tremendous impact on our physical and mental health, on our wellbeing and our family relations. Home personalisation is a fundamental human need. Front gardens, planters and defensible spaces are a landscaped transition between public and private zones that can give occupants the opportunity to personalise their homes with benches, tables, bicycles and other personal objects that contribute to the street character and the livelihood of the neighbourhood. Nottingham supports the introduction of innovative design alternatives such as Custom Build and Self-build. Custom Build allows off-plan-buyers to personalise their homes without compromising the overall quality and coherence of the scheme can be simply achieved through careful design. For example, offering a selection of fenestration colour, front garden railing styles or garden features.