Places of the Heart ─ The Psychogeography of Everyday Life

One of the finest science writers I've ever read.” Los Angeles Times

Ellard has a knack for distilling obscure scientific theories into practical wisdom.”New York Times Book Review

[Ellard] mak[es] even the most mundane entomological experiment or exegesis of psychological geekspeak feel fresh and fascinating.”NPR

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 citiesand ourselves.”CHARLES MONTGOMERY, author of Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design

Our surroundings can powerfully affect our thoughts, emotions, and physical responses, whether we're awed by the Grand Canyon or Hagia Sophia, panicked in a crowded room, soothed by a walk in the park, or tempted in casinos and shopping malls. InPlaces of the Heart, Colin Ellard explores how our homes, workplaces, cities, and natureplaces we escape to and can't escape fromhave influenced us throughout history, and how our brains and bodies respond to different types of real and virtual space. As he describes the insight he and other scientists have gained from new technologies, he assesses the influence these technologies will have on our evolving environment and asks what kind of world we are, and should be, creating.

Colin Ellard is the author of You Are Here: Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon, but Get Lost in the Mall. A cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Waterloo and director of its Urban Realities Laboratory, he lives in Kitchener, Ontario.

Colin Ellard, who works at the intersection of neuroscience and architectural and environmental design, is the author ofYou Are Here: Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon, but Get Lost in the Mall andPlaces of the Heart: The Psychogeography of Everyday Life (forthcoming from Bellevue Literary Press). He has published scientific work in international journals in North America, Europe, and Asia for the past twenty-five years and has also contributed to the public discussion of environmental psychology through his work with museums and the media. A cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Waterloo and director of its Urban Realities Laboratory, Ellard lives in Kitchener, Ontario.