Unit 6 - Our Residences Flashcards
Define a residence. Altman and his colleagues characterize residences along five dimensions. Describe these five dimensions. Where does your residence fit into each of these dimensions?
Residence is typically a physical structure that we live however, Atlman’s 5 dimensions can better characterize them.
- Residences vary from permanent to temporary. In industrialized countries, residents usually have permanent dwellings, although apparently this situation is not entirely satisfactory because many householders also maintain temporary residences.
- Residences vary from differentiated to homogenous. This refers to the separation, or lack of it, in the functions of rooms. i.e. do the rooms have specific activities
- Residences vary in communality and non-communality. This is the degree to which nuclear families live together or in different residences.
- Residences vary in identity versus communality. They often reflect the personal touches of their occupants. Identity is the extent to which a residence depicts the unique interests and needs of its residents. Communality is the extent to which a residence reflects the common stereotype of a home in that culture.
- Residences vary in their openness versus closedness to outsiders. In some places, houses typically are surrounded by walls or hedges; in others they are not. i.e. welcoming or cool or even hostile to causal visitors and signal willingness or unwillingness to interact with neighbors or other visitors.
Define a home. Outline the six dimensions of a home as provided by Gifford. Where does your home fit into each of these dimensions?
Home typically refers to the greater emotional relationship to the dwelling and some people may therefore be said to dwell in a residence but not live in a home. The dimensions from Gifford measure these factors from home to not-home.
- Home is a haven that surrounds us with privacy, security, refuge, and protection from the slings and arrows of life outside it.
- Home helps us to know our place in the world. It is a center from which we venture and return; it is one way that we order our existence in the world. This ordering is not only spatial, but temporal; home is strongly related to our sense of continuity: childhood experiences, leaving and returning, and the patterning of our daily lives. We learn about home from trips away from home, through contrast. People who commute enough that they need a second residence have a difficult time managing their sense of home.
- Home is central to our identity. As social creatures, home includes a sense of family, ethnic belonging, and socioeconomic status. Self-expression and personalization makes it come to represent ourselves. We may also derive our own identity in part from that home.
- Through order and identity, home means connectedness, the patterns of spatial and temporal order help us feel connected to certain people, to the place, to the past, and to the future. We feel part of a family or group, and part of culture.
- Home is warmth. Largely symbolic feeling of comfort.
- Home is physically suitable. Obviously, this means more than the material physicals aspects of the house. It means the physical form and structures of the house matches our physiological needs. Naturally, though, people vary. - People may vary to their physical needs and desires.
Distinguish between residential preferences and choices. What factors predict preferences and choices?
Residential preferences include the areas where someone would want to live, where residential choices reflect the areas someone lives for other reasons such as financial or work related.
Preferences appear to be more predictable from personal and architectural factors (e.g., a person’s values or the physical form of the residence); choices appear to be more predictable from economic factors (e.g., income and cost of residency).
Describe the cognitive processes that David Canter relates to residential satisfaction.
David Canter argued that evaluation of a residences satisfactoriness is necessarily purposive.
Purposive evaluations have several facets to them such as that (1) satisfaction may vary in its specificity or level (residents may be asked to evaluate a single part or larger portion of it).
(2) Residents may be asked to assess different qualities of the residence (its beauty, lighting, or spaciousness). These qualities are called referents; each one suggests a certain purpose that the residence serves well or poorly.
(3) Questions may take focus into account. The meaning of focus depends on the referent, but one way to think of it is to ask how broadly we are asking the resident to evaluate something. - i.e. what focus does this function cover? such as lighting a whole room vs a book.
The second cognitive factor is comparison.
Whether we explicitly ask a observers to compare a specific residence against a series of others or merely ask for a rating of the present one without explicitly pointing to others, they cannot help at least implicitly comparing the residence in question with others in their experience. -Therefore different observers will be comparing the present residence against different house in their experience.
Through comparison a discrepancy between residences will emerge.
Summarize the four types of factors that influence residential satisfaction and preference:
personal factors
social factors
physical factors
cultural factors
Personal Factors : Characteristics of individuals that influence satisfaction include demographic factors, personality, values, expectations, comparisons with other housing, and hopes for the future.
Older people like more security and routine with their homes where younger couples may prefer a little more mystery or extravagance.
Differences in socioeconomic status results in the richer being more concerned with aesthetics, where the less fortunate must balance a greater number of needs.
Social roles and gender also influence preference.
Personality is a reasonably long-term predictor of housing preferences and choice. Life values are also important for selection.
Comparison to other homes affect satisfaction.
Social Factors : Interactions with others, shared norms, privacy vs independence, and sense of security play an important role in residential preference.
Neighbor’s are especially important when they are very good or very bad, degree of similarity, and levels of privacy.
Norms for demographic.
Living group interaction - settling on interests.
Desire and satisfaction of particular social functions.
Physical Factors : Housing quality - more people are satisfied when the quality is better, although place attachment serves as a mediator of the relation between housing quality and positive affect.
Housing Form - People generally like single-family dwellings and dislike mobile homes
Architectural style - Preferences change with time as styles change, farmhouse and Tudor-style houses are preferred over saltbox and Mediterranean style, and different demographics prefer different designs
Interior - Most prefer higher ceilings that are flat and walls that meet at 90 degrees or more. Preference for color is less related to hue and more related to perceived warmth, saturation, and brightness.
Having views and outdoor spaces is also important. Most like clear physical boundaries.
Cultural Factors : People prefer housing that matches their cultural background. This is partly because residences that reflect one’s culture are designed to complement behavior patterns typical of that culture.
Cultural influences of resident preference may reflect cultural beliefs about gender roles, politics, neighbors, hierarchy, religion, kinship, and social relations, with kinship relations and attitudes towards women.
How do people arrange their home interiors and manage space in their homes?
Studies of interiors have concluded that homes can be evaluated in terms of decoration, functional organization, and structuring of space. Type and characteristics of residence largely determine order, inclusion of books, and artifacts.
Other such dimensions include simple-complex, conventional-unusual, rich-plain decor, and messy-tidy upkeep
Describe the relationship between behaviors and high density in residence.
High-density homes have residents with more psychological distress and psychiatric illness, especially for women, and are associated with increased substance abuse, juvenile delinquency, and fertility and mortality rates.
Furthermore, among preschoolers, cognitive development is significantly slower when children live in residences that were more densely populated and noisy.
High-density predisposed toddlers to lower approachability, less adaptability, higher intensity, and more negative moods.
Children in high density households may be forced outside more often, and may get into more trouble in the streets and school. Children may additionally have less control.
High-density may lead residents to believe they have less social support.
Summarize the relationship between house form and children’s development.
Apartment living has been associated with numerous childhood afflictions, including retarded movement skills, more respiratory diseases, more aggression, insomnia, more nervous disorders, reduced social skills, and disrupted play.
As the maintenance of a residence and its immediate neighborhood declines, the frequency of behavior problems in 9-12 year old children significantly increases - not a function of family income.
Those who had no view outside the home showed slower cognitive development, as well as no ‘stimulus shelter for escape’ reduce exploration.
Too much variety in objects may also influence children to be moody, intense, and lacking in persistence.
Buildings that discourage play such as Highrises lead to slowed development. Furthermore, Highrises can have negative influences on social development and seem to cause greater dissatisfaction for most people except for the elderly.
Is moving residence necessarily stressful? What factors influence whether moving is pleasant or unpleasant?
Factors that influence the stress of moving include whether the move is forced or chosen, whether or not the move fits the residents personality, needs, and values.
Moving is not always bad for health but may effect it when the person is not very exploratory, is forced to moved and so on, thereby causing stress.
Define Oscar Newman’s concept of defensible space. Summarize the criticisms of Newman’s idea made by other researchers and Newman’s responses to these criticisms. How have other researchers improved on Newman’s thesis?
Oscar Newman felt that by design and location, most housing projects were stigmatizing. A negative identity associated with public housing led to self-deprecation and helplessness among residents and exploitation by nonresidents.
Defensible Space : Is a model for residential environments which inhibits crime by creating the physical expression of social fabric the defends itself. Its goal is to produce an environment in which latent territoriality and a sense of community in the inhabitants can be translated into responsibility for insuring a safe, productive, and well maintained living space. The idea works on a set of proposed linkages:
- Design features encourage a feeling of territoriality in the form of a feeling of shared ownership and responsibility for physically defined areas.
- This feeling encourages surveillance and defense, that reduces unwanted intrusion and criminal behavior.
Criticisms : Methodological critiques range from the appropriateness of a number of statistical procedures to the question to determine whether two neighborhoods were comparable on all relevant social characteristics. -therefore differences in crime may not be due to physical design.
- Some argue against the idea of territoriality as a mediator for defensible space. -some say it is ill defined within the theory, territoriality may vary more by culture or other factors rather then physical space.
- Some dislike the deterministic implications of the theory.
Further Revisions : Some have taken a more scientific approach (clarifying the model and measuring behavioral and cognitive linkages involved) and others a more practical approach (making multiple changes to the environment that go past the physical and encompass the social and organizational structure of neighborhoods).
