Redesigning cities: Intersection of geometry, perception and urban well-being in India

Although it is in urban spaces that the most abstract arrangements of human design are applied today, there is no denying that cities are part of nature and governed by natural processes. But while many cities around the world have entered a phase of population decline, 17 of the 20 fastest-growing metropolises in the world will be in India, according to a recent Oxford Economics Report. 

In India, the urban sprawl is slated to grow from 36 per cent in 2023 to 43 per cent in 2035 and around 60 per cent of the nation’s population will be urban by 2050. But while city life is aspirationally desirable for its many amenities, there is also the paradox that cities can become increasingly unliveable in India. More than five of the top ten most air-polluted cities in the world today are in India. 

Furthermore, poor town planning, pedestrian-unfriendly streets, non-existent sewage treatment and solid waste disposal mechanisms and many other human-made designs incompatible with natural processes have a collective negative impact on both human physical well-being and psyche. 

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Given this backdrop, we must consider the geometry of structures and materials as a first step when redesigning physical spaces from a psychological and functional perspective. Many modern buildings and even city layouts have simple geometries based on centralised decisions predicated largely on rapid, time-bound development. 

The bland, featureless walls of many a modern corporate office or the repetitive cubicles of a tech company leap to one’s mind. In contrast, many historical buildings, particularly those of elite patronage, had complex geometries and engineering and organically developed in different cultural sequences of several independent decisions over time. 

For example, ancient temples with ornate motifs of nature, grand old mosques with complex geometric patterns, medieval cathedrals with baroque pillars and intricate stained-glass windows and magnificent palaces were all designed to evoke a magisterial sense of grandeur in worshipers and visitors alike by tugging at their primal instincts. 

So how and why do such complex geometric structures evoke deep-seated emotions in us? A brief elaboration of geometry is necessary to demonstrate this. In traditional Euclidean geometry, there are four well-known topological dimensions of 0-D for points, 1-D for straight lines, 2-D for planes, and 3-D for volumetric objects like cubes and spheres. 

On the other hand, objects that follow fractal geometry have an intermediate “fractional” dimensionality, such as 1.2D for an irregular line or 2.7D for a crumpled surface. Fractals consist of patterns that repeat on finer and finer scales, resulting in shapes of incredible complexity. A modest example can be found in fern leaves. 

In recent years, natural landscapes, or rather whatever remains of them, have been empirically shown to be overwhelmingly dominated by fractally geometric shapes.

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In an unaltered “wild” landscape, it is doubtful you'll ever see a cube-shaped boulder or a perfectly spherical tree. And because humans have evolved originally in such wild landscapes with jagged terrain, rolling hills and canopy outlines that had to be navigated to meet our basic needs, we are conditioned to respond positively to such shapes and patterns, where the human eye-search pattern itself is a fractal. 

This means that the eyes first scan big elements in a scene and then make micro passes in smaller versions of the big scans and they do this in a mid-range fractal dimension. This fascinating understanding of our eye movement is beginning to reveal how we respond to shapes and structures. 

For instance, eye-tracking experiments have shown that fractal properties inherent in natural features might explain some of the positive psychological and physiological responses to viewing nature.

The positive effects of fractal shapes on human health have been demonstrated by studies where patients assigned to rooms with windows overlooking a natural scene had a faster recovery from surgery than those in closed rooms with bare walls. 

Quantitative electroencephalography recordings by other researchers have also indicated that people are more wakefully relaxed during exposure to natural landscapes than when exposed to modern townscapes. Studies of wall art in hospitals find that images with natural content have positive effects on anxiety and stress. 

Adding to all this evidence, a more recent study by researchers that drew on 18 years of data from over 10,000 participants exploring the relationship between urban green space, wellbeing and psychological health indicates that people are happier when living in urban areas with greater amounts of complexly arranged vegetated space. 

It is now conclusively evident that such spaces, which approximate fractal dimensions of low to mid-range D (between 1.3 and 1.5), induce maximal alpha response in the frontal region of the brain — which is to say that this dimensional range is incredibly restorative and relaxing. By extension, artistic expressions that resonate along this dimensional range have also been proven to deliver similar results. 

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So, given that fractals are associated with organic form, and historical cities were largely associated with placing aptly designed buildings into their natural landscapes, it is obvious that one way to bring back pleasing environments today would be to have the fractal dimensional properties of built structures match those of the surrounding natural features combined tastefully with a diverse palette of native, local vegetation.

This would involve preserving and restoring our heritage structures that already have the necessary geometry, along with replacing defectively designed ones. Adding these nature-inspired geometric elements to our public spaces would go a long way towards giving people in the area the chance to experience self-actualisation again. These rich visual stimuli should be offered in an accessible and democratic manner and executed with cutting-edge engineering capable of processing natural biogeochemical pathways.

This would also transform human-dominated spaces to be more compatible with native flora and associated fauna, the sum of which can emerge into more synergistic and functional urban ecosystems that in turn can help solve many of our current environmental predicaments.

Robin Kurian Abraham is Lead, Ecological Restoration programme, The Habitats Trust

Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth

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