6 - Clarifying psychological and ecological consequences

Summary

Streets, boundaries, forecourts, and entrances are key areas for self-expression. All those who enter a house must pass through some forecourt. Creating a good impression, a powerful impression, or a friendly, welcoming one depends very much on this “front.” This area is also very susceptible to pressure from neighbors. A resident who fails to mow the lawn regularly or to paint the house, or who leaves old cars outside will soon incur the ire of neighbors in most communities. It may be property values that people worry about or it may be simply the sense of street identity.

– Don Appleyard, “Home” (1979)

The conceptual framework introduced in the preceding chapter associated human territorial functioning with four classes of consequences: social psychological within group, social psychological between group, psychological, and ecological. That framework is more fully specified in the current chapter.

Organization of the chapter

Two additional perspectives are introduced that clarify how the psychological and ecological consequences of territorial functioning, depicted in the preceding chapter, emerge. A context-specific stress model developed by Dan Stokols is outlined. This perspective delineates the process leading to stress-related consequences. It is particularly helpful in considering spaces where the person-place bonds are of high centrality. In relatively private locations, where the person-place bond is of high centrality, territorial functioning accomplishes a spatiotemporal sorting, reducing conflicting functional demands and thereby decreasing experienced stress.