Urban psychology
Urban psychology studies how the built environment shapes perception, behaviour and wellbeing: why one street feels calm and another anxious, how we orient ourselves in the city, what makes a place memorable. It joins environmental psychology with urban design.
Kevin Lynch showed in The Image of the City (1960) that people build mental maps out of paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks, and that a legible city is lived better. Later studies measure the effect of noise, greenery or density on stress. Design is not decoration: it conditions how we feel.