#145: How Architecture Shapes Our Emotions

Everywhere but where we live—and maybe where you live?—it seems like things are slowly creeping back toward how they were before the pandemic, or at least slowly getting less awful. In New York City, the High Line is reopening a little bit more of its 1.5 mile length to a socially distanced public, bringing a few more blocks of that beloved, reclaimed railroad to visitors. So this week, we’re looking back to an interview from the spring of 2017, when we walked along the High Line with architecture critic Sarah Williams Goldhagen. Her book, Welcome to Your World, is about how people experience the built environment, not just as individuals but as groups of people living together in cities or towns. She weaves together research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience to explain how the buildings we encounter every day shape our feelings, our memories, and our well-being. Go beyond the episode: Sarah Williams Goldhagen’s Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives If you’re a New Yorker, plan your own (socially distanced) visit to New York’s High Line park Tune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • Acast Have suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes!