Residential Crowding and Design

The intent of this book is threefold: (1) to summarize recent research concerned with residential crowding, (2) to present some new perspec­ tives on this important subject, and (3) to consider design implications and recommendations that can be derived from the existing body of research. We have sought to bring together the work of many of the researchers most involved in these areas, and have asked them to go beyond their data-to present new insights into response to residential crowding and to speculate about the meaning of their work for the present and future design of residential environments. We feel that this endeavor has been successful, and that the present volume will help to advance our understanding of these issues. The study of residential density is not new. Studies in this area were conducted by sociologists as early as the 1920s, yielding moderate corre­ lational relationships between census tract density and various social and physical pathologies. This work, however, has been heavily criticized because it did not adequately consider confounding social structural factors, such as social class and ethnicity. The research that will be presented in the present volume represents a new generation of crowding investigation. All of the work has been conducted during the 1970s, and a range of methodological strategies have been employed in these studies. Front Matter....Pages i-xv Introduction....Pages 1-7 Residential Crowding Research....Pages 9-21 Crowding and Behavior in Chicago, 1940–1970....Pages 23-39 Crowding in Urban Environments: An Integration of Theory and Research....Pages 41-54 Residential Density, Social Overload, and Social Withdrawal....Pages 55-75 Density, Perceived Choice, and Response to Controllable and Uncontrollable Outcomes....Pages 77-93 Field Research on the Effects of Crowding in Prisons and on Offshore Drilling Platforms....Pages 95-106 Perception of Residential Crowding, Classroom Experiences, and Student Health....Pages 107-126 Environmental Satisfaction in High- and Low-Rise Residential Settings: A Lewinian Perspective....Pages 127-140 Crowding and Personal Control: Social Density and the Development of Learned Helplessness....Pages 141-159 Introduction....Pages 161-166 Current Status of Work on Crowding and Suggestions for Housing Design....Pages 167-174 Generating Behavioral Data for the Design Process....Pages 175-196 Design Implications of Spatial Research....Pages 197-215 Density, Personal Control, and Design....Pages 217-227 Designing for High-Density Living....Pages 229-240 Back Matter....Pages 241-252 I The Study of Residential Crowding.- 1 Residential Crowding Research.- 2 Crowding and Behavior in Chicago, 1940-1970.- 3 Crowding in Urban Environments: An Integration of Theory and Research.- 4 Residential Density, Social Overload, and Social Withdrawal.- 5 Density, Perceived Choice, and Response to Controllable and Uncontrollable Outcomes.- 6 Field Research on the Effects of Crowding in Prisons and on Offshore Drilling Platforms.- 7 Perception of Residential Crowding, Classroom Experiences, and Student Health.- 8 Environmental Satisfaction in High- and Low-Rise Residential Settings: A Lewin