How does the organization of a workplace influence our feelings of well-being and productivity?

Why is it that some of us can’t wait to get home after work, while others dread the thought of home, no matter how much we enjoy the other people in it?

Why does our craving for certain neighborhoods send their property values sky high while other neighborhoods become desolate wastelands?

Psychogeography shows us how strongly our surroundings influence our feelings and our emotions.

Each chapter of Places of the Heart shows us how one type of space affects us emotionally, and how modern technology is altering this interaction. We discover that:

Environments will soon be personalized so that they respond to your emotional state.

• The balance between surveillance and privacy is a strong predictor of emotions; this balance is manipulated deliberately in places such as prisons.

• Nature is restorative, but simulated natural environments can be as restorative as real ones.

• Places that inspire awe do so by evoking the notion of significance, and they produce positive changes in behaviour as a result.

Now that so much of our public sharing takes place over the airwaves rather than in real space, the rules of design are changing entirely.

• There are simple tools for measuring your personal psychogeography.

• Our environments are transforming from passive spaces in which we act out our existence to active participants in it.

• Colin Ellard discusses the link between good urban design and good health with CBC

• Boring cityscapes are bad for your health (The Boston Globe)

• The Atlantic's CityLab: How Our Evolving Brains Can Shape Cities

• The psychology behind scary spaces (CHCH)

• Pulse of the Planet (National Science Foundation): a 5-part series with Colin Ellard on psychogeography. Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5

• How our surroundings affect the way we think and feel (ABC, Australia)

• Why boring cities make for stressed citizens (Aeon)

• See Colin Ellard's show and take a guided city walk

• View the Bellevue Literary Press sellsheet - includes links to Colin's TED talk, features by or about him on NPR, and in Time, Scientific American, Psychology Today, and The Guardian

• Read Colin in The Guardian – 'Cities and their psychology: how neuroscience affects urban planning'

PRAISE FOR COLIN ELLARD'S PLACES OF THE HEART

“Aren’t architects and urban planners trained to design buildings and cities? Why should a psychologist have a say in this? Because Ellard brings tools to the design board that should help ensure more positive responses to urban environment, from a mundane alleyway to an awe-inspiring cathedral or city hall. . . . Places of the Heart should stimulate debate about how our cities are shaped and how they shape us.” — WATERLOO REGION RECORD

“A really great book.” — SCIENCE FRIDAY

“Wide-ranging and absorbing. . . . Powerfully and comprehensively written. . . . An exceptional introduction to a vital part of the human experience.” — COLORADO REVIEW

“From Neolithic monuments that awe to ‘playground casinos’ that empty wallets, Ellard argues that a scientific understanding of how our surroundings affect us must be the foundation on which we build the cities and homes of tomorrow.” — DISCOVER MAGAZINE

“From Stonehenge to the African savannah, the book is filled with stories both personal and professional that offer profound lessons about the psychology of places…Ellard is most compelling when describing his own experiments and their results, producing gems that will help architects and urban planners in their everyday practice.” — SPACING MAGAZINE

“Meshing recent findings with thoughtful appraisals of their implications, Ellard looks at spaces and the awe, lust, boredom, affection or anxiety that they trigger. He is richly insightful, particularly on digital encroachments into the experience of place.” — NATURE

“He manages to write in a register that is both explicatory for a mass audience and nerdy enough for those familiar with the fields he glosses. Ellard’s greatest talent lies in sketching the contours of complex issues without overlooking their rough edges.” — QUILL & QUIRE

“This beautifully written book grabs the reader from the start, with personal stories from the author’s life interwoven with history, archeology, technology, and design.” — ESTHER M. STERNBERG M.D., author of Healing Spaces

“If you care about your city and your happiness, read every page of this fascinating book. Places of the Heart offers a thrilling journey through the pathways of our cities and the human mind. This is no flight of fancy. It's an evidence-based exploration of how the places we inhabit change our minds and bodies. Colin Ellard is one of the world's foremost thinkers on the neuroscience of urban design. Here he offers an entirely new way to understand our cities – and ourselves.” — CHARLES MONTGOMERY, author of Happy City