A considerable body of folklore and scientific research alludes to the efficacy of the vernacular environment to influence both aesthetic experience and general well-being. To examine explicitly whether stress recovery and/or immunization varies as a function of the roadside environment, 160 college-age participants, both male and female, viewed one of four different video-taped simulated drives through outdoor environments immediately following and preceding mildly stressful events. Overall, it was anticipated that participants who viewed artifact-dominated drives, relative to participants who viewed nature-dominated drives, would show greater autonomic activity indicative of stress (e.g. elevated blood pressure and electrodermal activity), as well as show altered somatic activity indicative of greater negative affect (e.g. elevated electromyographic (EMG) activity over the brow region and decreased activity over the cheek region). In addition, it was expected that participants who viewed nature-dominated drives would experience quicker recovery from stress and greater immunization to subsequent stress than participants who viewed artifact-dominated drives. The overall pattern of results is consistent with both hypotheses and the findings are interpreted to support postulating a sympathetic-specific mechanism that underlies the effect of nature on stress recovery and immunization.

Donald Appleyard (1928 - 1982)

(July 26, 1928 – September 23, 1982) was an urban designer and theorist, teaching at the University of California, Berkeley.

Born in England, Appleyard studied first architecture, and later urban planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After graduation he taught at MIT for six years, and later at Berkley. He worked on neighborhood design in Berkeley and Athens and city wide planning in San Francisco and Ciudad Guayana. He died in Athens in a car accident.

During his career he pursued a strong interest in environmental perception and community based planning. He studied the social and psychological effects of traffic and neighborhood layout, devised sensitive tools for the analysis of peoples’ environmental perceptions, and took issue with the power conflicts inherent in mainstream urban planning processes. The Environmental Simulation Laboratory at Berkeley and Places magazine were founded under his leadership.