On the relation between culture and environment.

 
Preface 

In this article I synthesize in a highly condensed form a body of work on 

culture-environment relations. This work has been published over a large period of time 
and in a variety of places and publications. This synthesis both reveals and makes explicit 
many connections only implicit so far. These connections can also be stated more concisely, 
thus making it more usable. Since it refers to my own work, it is written in essay form with 
references to a list of further readings (which is also a complete bibliography of my work 
specifically on this topic).​1 
 
I address this topic within the broader context of environment-behavior relations (EBR). In 
this way the role of culture can be seen in light of other aspects of this set of relationships. 
It is, therefore, not claimed that culture is the only relevant consideration although it is 
claimed that it is a central and inescapable one.  
 
Major emphasis is placed on clarifying the concepts used and making the concepts and the 
relationships among them more operational. This is essential in order to make it possible to
use these concepts in both analysis and design. A major goal here is to make the topic more
concrete, specific and manageable since at the moment it is rather vague. It is like the 
weather: Everyone talks about it but no one does anything about it-mainly because they do 
not know how. At the same time the discussion is kept general to make it applicable to all 
cultures, all types of environments, all types of problems and so on. Examples will be 
found in the further readings.  
 
Over the past few years culture-environment relations have been among the most active 
and lively areas of environment-behavior studies (EBS). Not only has this topic been 
prominent at meetings of the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA), but 
there are two series of conferences devoted specifically to this topic. This is also the case in 
other fields where the role and effects of culture, previously unrecognized, neglected, or 
minimized, have become influential. This is the case in areas as diverse as developmental 
disorders, sport, employment, development policies, language development, medicine and 
medical practice, and psychology (with cross-cultural psychology as a major field). One 
also finds the concept of culture and cultural approaches being applied to institutions, as 
in the use of "corporate culture" in office studies, and to professions (including 
architecture).  
 
The reasons for these developments have to do with the inescapable and central role that 
culture plays in all aspects of human behavior, cognition, affect, preference, and meaning 
(although how central it is, the extent and strength of that influence, are empirical 
questions).  
 
At its most basic, the centrality of culture involves an apparent paradox. On the one hand 
the possession of culture is typically seen as the defining attribute of humans, defining the 
species (Homo Sapiens Sapiens). ​As a defining attribute culture is an inescapable aspect of 
any human phenomenon, including how people shape environments, use them and 
interact with them. At the same time the possession of culture divides the single biological 
species into groups that are so different and varied that they can be seen as 
"pseudo-species."​ This variability of groups is also a very important attribute of humans 
and also central to understanding EBR and design properly conceived. These groups are 
defined by culture.  
 
Note that this involves different user groups which are highly variable in their wants (and 
to a lesser extent needs). It also involves the meanings they give to environmental 
elements, their preferences and notions of environmental quality, images, ideals, and 
schemata. In addition, it applies to users as a whole, as opposed to designers who 
constitute a very specific, highly idiosyncratic group; they often do not share any of the 
above characteristics with most users. This also has major implications for design.  
 
It is important to note that the nature of relevant groups is a rather under-researched topic. 
I have argued that children, the elderly, the urban poor in the third world, the 
handicapped, single parents and other "special user groups" encountered in literature may 
not be useful or appropriate. In some way "culture" is more relevant, cross-cutting the 
characteristics of such groups. 

Culture and EBS

I approach the more specific reasons why the role of culture is inescapable from the perspective of
EBS-as I do all aspects of environmental analysis and design -- because I regard this emergent
discipline as the only valid starting point.

I have long argued that all specific problems and questions in EBS can be understood in terms of
what I call ​the three basic questions of EBR​ (which thus define the field):  

1. What are the characteristics of people, as 

members of the species, as individuals and as 
members of various groups ranging from 
families to societies that shape the environment 
and, in design, should shape the environment so 
that it is congruent with these characteristics and 
supportive of them? 

2. In what ways do which attributes of 

environments affect what groups of people in 
which ways, under what sets of circumstances, 
why and how? 

3. Given this two-way interaction of people and 

environments, they must be linked in some 
ways: What are the mechanisms that link them?

These are all researchable questions, and answers to them must be based on research. In turn, this
research-based knowledge is the only valid basis for design, although this is not a topic I will
discuss here.​2​ Here I argue that in all three of these basic questions, culture plays a major role.

In the first question, these characteristics are partly evolutionary and bio-social, partly
psychological, and partly cultural. Culture itself evolved with humans and thus plays a role even at
that level, including insights into how human environments evolved from hominid (and even
animal) ones. As already mentioned, cross-cultural psychology is a major, rapidly growing field so
that even psychological characteristics are influenced by culture to varying extents. Thus affective
responses, evaluation, preference, and meaning tend to be much more culturally variable than
cognition which, in turn, is more influenced by culture than is perception. Nothing needs to be said
here about the role of cultural variables themselves.

The role of culture in the second question follows from group variability. Different groups are
affected differently by the same attributes of environments. At the same time that different aspects
of environments become salient to different groups, their preferences vary on the basis of their
different evaluations of environmental quality based on differing values, ideals, images and
schemata. Their choices also vary-and choice, or habitat selection, is the major effect of
environments on people. The meanings which groups express through built environments (seen
broadly as cultural landscapes), how they express them and how they decode such meanings also
vary. Thus the variety of environments and their characteristics, and changes to them, are also a
result of cultural variables.

In terms of the third question, a number of the mechanisms that link people and
environments-perception, cognition, preference, affect, meaning, supportiveness, and
congruence-are influenced by culture to varying extents (as already pointed out).

It follows that culture plays a role in all three of the basic questions of EBS. To reiterate: The extent,
importance and strength of such influence and the specifics are empirical questions, i.e. to be
answered through research; they are not matters of a priori decisions, guesswork, opinion or wishful
thinking.

There are, of course, other formulations of EBS. I will briefly discuss one (by Gary Moore, Paul
Tuttle and Sandra Howell​3​) and show that in it also, culture plays an inescapable role.

On this view, EBS can best be understood in terms of three components: settings and places, user
groups, and socio-behavioral phenomena. Without arguing the case in detail, one can suggest that
settings and "places"​4​ are culturally defined. What we call regions, cities, suburbs, dwellings, rooms
of various kinds (e.g. living rooms, family rooms, dens, kitchens, bathrooms, studies, offices,
seminar rooms), parks, streets and the many building types and their parts and so on and on, as well
as the settings of which they are composed, are all culturally defined. User groups are at least partly
a function of culture on the basis of my argument earlier. Finally, how people behave and their
social structures are all culturally highly variable and can be seen as specific expressions of culture.
Thus culture plays a role in socio-behavioral phenomena.

I think it is safe to suggest that culture will be found to be inescapable in any other
conceptualization of EBS.

What is meant by "culture"?

It is usual to find the term "culture" used without further explanation or clarification. I 
have also been using it so far as though it were a self-evident concept which needs no 
explicit discussion or clarification of its nature, i.e. a definition of what it means. But in fact 
that is highly necessary and I will do so before I turn to ways of making it operational so 
that it can be used in analysis or design.  
 
The term is recent and was first used in its current anthropological sense in 1871 (by Tylor) 
who defined it as ​"that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, laws, 
customs and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society."​5 
This usage is very different to its more common meaning (still found) where it refers to 
high culture as opposed to other products of human life and where it is seen as analogous 
to "civilization," whereas in the present sense all human groups possess culture.  
 
Anthropologists agree about the centrality of "culture" in defining humanity but tend to 
disagree about definitions. In 1952, two prominent American anthropologists, Kroeber and 
Kluckhohn, reviewed numerous definitions of culture.​6  
 
There have been many more definitions and conceptualizations of culture since then. 
Various classifications have been proposed for grouping these various definitions (Kroeber 
and Kluckhohn propose six classes). Using a different set of categories it can be argued that
for purposes of EBS it is useful to think that all definitions fall into one of three general 
views of culture. One defines it as a ​way of life typical of a group​; the second as a ​system 
of meanings, symbols, and schemata transmitted through symbolic codes;​ the third as a ​set 
of adaptive strategies for survival related to ecology and resources.​ These are 
complementary rather than conflicting. Thus particular cultures began as ​a group's 
adaptive strategies within their ecological setting​. These ​become encoded in cognitive 
schemata, symbols, and some vision of an ideal, which are passed on to new generations. 
These, in turn, lead to particular ways of living and behaving, including designed 
environments as settings for the kind of people a particular group sees as normative, and 
the particular lifestyle which is significant and typical, distinguishing this group from 
others.  
 
Recently there has been a tendency of a variety of fields to suggest that in making 
inferences about unobservable entities (which "culture" most certainly is, being a 
definitional ​concept subsuming the myriad things people do​) it may be more useful to ask 
what they do rather than what they are​ (and then how they do these things). One ​can 
apply this approach to "culture", asking what culture does rather than what it is.​ Once 
again, at least three answers can be found.  
 
The first is that ​culture may be regarded as the distinctive means whereby cultures 
maintain their identity, i.e. its purpose is precisely to create the "pseudo-species" 
mentioned earlier​. A second answer is that ​culture acts as a control mechanism, it carries 
information that directs how behavior and artifacts are to be created.​ It has been compared 
metaphorically to ​both a blueprint and to DNA, and described as a​ ​design for living.​ A 
third answer is that ​a major role of culture is to act as a structure or framework that gives 
meaning to particulars. 7​​ Again, these types of answers are complementary rather than 
conflicting. In fact, all six of the approaches to culture reviewed above can be shown to be 
complementary.  
 
Different types of definitions and conceptualizations are useful for particular types of 
questions and problems, of different degrees of generality, at different scales, and 
consequently for different disciplines and fields. Even within EBS (and, by extension, 
environmental design) various formulations may be found to be useful for different types 
of questions and problems. There is, however, another way of addressing the issue of the 
role of culture in EBS and of dealing with the question of why, despite so much talk about 
culture, it has not been used very much. Various reasons for this can be given, but I will 
discuss one here, suggesting that to become useful, "culture" must be made more 
operational. 

Operationalizing the Concept of Culture

I suggest that as it stands the concept of culture is not very useful in EBS - in fact it is 
essentially unusable. There are two reasons for this.  
 
The first concerns the nature of statements about the relation between culture and 
environments. These tend to assume implicitly that culture and designed environments are 
equivalent units, in the sense that they are equal in "scale." That is not the case. ​Culture is a 
vast domain, built form (however broadly defined) is a small part of it and also a subset of 
it​. The latter is, as it were, embedded in the former. This makes the nature of the 
relationships between them, and the nature of the translation process of one into the other, 
rather difficult to grasp. Without resolving either the nature of the relationship or the 
translation process, it is essential that this difficulty be borne in mind.  
 
The second reason concerns the impossibility of using the concept "culture" in trying to 
understand environments and how they are used, or to design environments for culture. It 
can be suggested that "culture" is both too abstract and too global (or general) to be useful. 
It is often useful to clarify excessively broad and abstract concepts by "dismantling" them 
and then studying the components and the ways in which they interrelate with each other 
and with other variables (e.g. components of built environments). Over the years I have 
developed two complementary ways of responding to the twin problems of excessive 
abstractness and excessive generality.  
 
The first addresses the view that "culture" is too abstract. It begins with the frequent 
reference to "socio-cultural" variables, and takes the position that "social" and "cultural" are 
distinct and different. "​Cultural" refers to ideational variables, the blueprint for the social 
variables which are then seen as referring to more concrete manifestations or expressions 
of culture​. Important among these are the actual potentially observable social expressions 
of culture such as family and kinship structures, social networks, roles, statuses, social 
institutions, and the like. This can be diagrammed as follows:  
 
While it is virtually impossible to link culture to built environments, it is feasible to relate 
them to family and kinship structures, clans or notices, religions or recreational 
institutions, sex and other roles, social networks, or status hierarchies.  
 
It should also be emphasized that "culture" is a theoretical construct, it exists by definition 
and is a conceptual summary shorthand (and proposed explanation) for particular 
conjunctions of a great variety of human phenomena. No one has even seen or ever will 
see or observe culture, only its effects, expressions, or products. One is thus making 
inferences about an unobservable entity; that presents no insurmountable problems if the 
nature of that entity is borne in mind.  
 
The discussion immediately above leads to the second problem-that "culture" is too broad 
or global. There is a second way of dismantling this concept which I have used and 
advocated since the 1970's. This begins with the observation that it is not possible to link 
culture and environments at that level of generality. To be asked to analyze the relation 
between culture and environment, or to "design for culture" is to be given an impossible 
task. Greater specificity does not help: To design housing for culture is indeed more 
specific but neither easier nor more feasible. To consider housing for a particular culture is 
still more specific but still impossible. Part of the problem stems from the terms 
"environment" and "housing" both being unusable without further definition, clarification, 
and "dismantling." Part, however, has to do with the excessive generality of the term 
"culture."  
 
The response mentioned above ​depends on the notion that it may be possible to show that 
particular parts of the environment are congruent with, or supportive of, particular 
"lower-level" components or expressions of culture.​ While social variables are useful, as 
already discussed, I have used a particular sequence of increasing specificity going from 
culture through world views and values to lifestyles and activities.  
 
World views, the way members of a particular culture "see" the world has some utility. The
concept is still abstract and not easy to use. Values are more specific and can be useful. ​The 
study of environmental preference and choice is explicitly based on values, as is much of 
micro-economics. The concept of lifestyle has proven particularly useful for the study of a 
great variety of environment-behavior interactions, and for the design of environments. 
Lifestyle itself has been defined in many different ways, and these definitions have been 
reviewed by W. Michelson and P. Reed (in an unpublished report). This review leads to an 
operational definition: Lifestyle is the result of choices about how to allocate resources. 
This definition I have found most useful, have used since the 1970's, and have refined and 
suggested how it can be represented graphically in the form of profiles.​8  
 
Lifestyle leads to activities and activity systems, the specifics of which begin to explain the 
diversity of environments and hence their links with culture.​ ​Together, lifestyle and 
activities are extremely useful in analyzing and designing environments. Lifestyle groups 
are extremely useful since most other criteria for group membership such as age, sex, race, 
ethnicity, religion, caste, occupation, tribe, and ideology, historically used to define groups,
can be expressed in terms of lifestyle​ (which is increasingly used in marketing, advertising, 
consumer research and housing design by developers). Activity systems are the most 
concrete and planners and designers are relatively familiar with using activity analysis.  
 
The two types of dismantling can be combined into a single diagram, the size of arrows 
suggesting the relative feasibility and ease of using the various components for both 
analyzing and designing environments. 

What Is "Environment"?
I have been using the term "environment" as though it also was unproblematic and needed 
no discussion or clarification. Yet, as in the case of "culture" and many other overly vague 
and broad terms, it is essential to try to dismantle such terms, to define them operationally 
and to conceptualize them in ways that are useful for the problem at hand-in this case, for 
dealing with environment-behavior relations generally, and culture-environment relations 
in particular. Among a number of ways of conceptualizing the term "environment" I will 
discuss three complementary (rather than conflicting) conceptualizations which I find 
useful. These are:  

(i). The environment as cultural landscape. 

 (ii). The environment as the organization of ​space, time, 
meaning and communication. 

(iii). The environment as a ​system of settings​ within 

which systems of activities take place.
 
(i). The environment as cultural landscape. 
The designed environment now includes the whole earth because I take design to mean 
any modification by humans of the face of the earth​. This is a much broader definition of 
design than is common, but it is an essential one​. Designed environments include such 
human modifications​ as the planting or clearing of forests, the diversion of rivers and 
clearing of fields in certain patterns, the placement of roads and dams, of pubs and cities; 
roadside stands and second hand car lots are as much designed environments as 
glamorous office blocks and cultural centers; suburbs, nomadic camps or villages, and 
roadside strips are as much an act of design as architects' or planners' activities of 
dreaming up ideal cities or creating high-style buildings. For one thing such apparently 
mundane activities are by far the most important in their impact on the earth. The way 
neighborhoods, cities, regions and whole countries look depends, in the final analysis, on 
the design activity of many individuals and groups both in the past and present.  
 
What all this activity has in common is that it represents ​a choice out of all the possible 
alternatives. The specific nature of the choices made tends to be lawful, to reflect the 
culture of the people concerned​. In fact, one way of looking at culture is in terms of the 
most common choices made. Systematic choices lead to style, and make different places 
different. This consistent system of choices also decides how people dress and behave, 
what they eat and their table manners while eating. It decides the way they interact and 
structure space, whether they stand close or far apart, whether they touch or not, how 
loudly they talk and what gestures they use.  
 
These recognizably different places comprise cultural landscapes. It is important to note 
that people do not live just in buildings, but move from buildings to settings in other 
buildings, to outdoor settings, both built and "natural." The result is that they use the 
cultural landscape that is the subject matter of the study of EBR, and of environmental 
design. The term comes from geography, and refers to any part of the surface of the earth 
that has been modified by human (i.e. cultural) action. But by now the whole earth has 
been transformed by such action, including the most remote and "natural" looking 
rainforests and deserts. At issue is the extent to which they have been modified, ranging 
from those least modified (which we call "natural") to settlements which have been most 
modified.  
 
The study of cultural landscapes raises a series of most interesting and profound issues, 
only one of which can be explored here.​9​ It is related to the fact that ​cultural landscapes are 
rarely "designed"​ in the common meaning of this term (although parts of them may be). 
This draws attention to one of their most interesting and intriguing attributes: The fact that 
although not "designed" they have an unmistakable and easily identifiable character​. If one 
knows the "code," a single view may suffice to identify such a landscape. This raises the 
question of how such landscapes come to be and are recognizable, how the many 
independent decisions of innumerable people over long periods of time come to "add up".  
 
An obvious answer is that somehow the decisions taken and the choices made (and, to 
reiterate, ​design is a process of choosing among alternatives​) are consistent, systematic and 
orderly. In effect, they produce a style which is best defined as the outcome of systematic 
choices made over time. The fact that cultural landscapes "add up" to recognizable wholes 
in spite of the apparently uncoordinated activity of many actors over long periods of time 
implies that the people involved must share schemata. We have already seen that one 
definition of culture is precisely in terms of shared schemata, so that groups differ in terms 
of their schemata and the ideals that they embody. Such schemata can refer to ideal 
landscape which may be symbolic, cosmological or non-empirical. Schemata, in turn, are 
translated into form by people who apply systems of rules that try to re-create, however 
imperfectly, the ideal landscapes embodied in schemata. Such systems of rules can be 
formal or informal, unwritten or written and provide the frameworks within which the 
apparently independent decisions "add up." The decisions and choices are made by 
following rule systems, which can be seen as specific aspects of the habitual behavior 
resulting from ​culture and also as being related to the definition of culture as a framework 
for assembling particulars, or a set of instructions, or a design for living.  
 
(ii).The environment as the organization of space, time, meaning and 
communication. 
Design as here discussed is a process of organization of the four variables listed above. 
Architects have typically emphasized space to the exclusion of the other variables. Even 
"space," however, is a much more complex notion than many architects have assumed. 
Even physical space, the intervals, distances and separations among elements (both fixed 
features and semi-fixed features) concern not only those among objects and things, but 
between those and people (non-fixed features), and people and people. Moreover, it is 
quite easy to show that these are many different "types" of space in addition to physical 
space: human and non-human, sacred or religious space, abstract geometric space, 
symbolic space, behavioral space, perceived space, subjective space, experiential or sensory
space (​in all sensory modalities, not just vision​), cognitive space, and social space - and 
most of these vary with culture. Each could be discussed in detail and numerous examples 
and references given. Moreover, this is not a complete list.​10  
 
Since design involves the organization of the environment, it involves the organization of 
space. However, it is not clear which type of space is involved, nor how one is transformed 
into another. It is essential to know that, because otherwise environments are not 
comprehensible. For example, if one seeks an organization based on abstract geometric 
space, then one based on social space or sacred space will be incomprehensible. Also, in 
given places reversals may occur with changes in schemata, values, lifestyles, etc. From 
this point of view, therefore, there are no chaotic or disorganized environments - only 
different orders which need to be understood. Environments seen as "chaotic" are those not
understood, not liked, or inappropriate for a given observer or user.  
 
Space organization alone, however, does not represent the environment. It is already clear 
that the environment is also, and very (or most) importantly ​the organization of meaning; 
elements (whether objects or people) are arranged in space; sizes, colors and materials 
used, and so on in order to communicate particular meanings​. Users then react to, and 
interpret environments in terms of meanings - and ​those vary among different groups of 
users, between users and designers, i.e. they vary with culture.  
 
The environment is also as much temporal as it is spatial. Different groups organize time 
differently, for example, arranging activities linearly or simultaneously. They also value 
time very differently, the result being different tempos and rhythms of activities. 
Individuals and groups are also separated in time as well as in space, and can achieve 
privacy through scheduling as well as through spatial organization (or by using physical 
elements, or through other mechanisms). Moreover the same space can become different 
settings, so that it is used differently at different times, has different rules and means 
different things at different times, with different people present. ​Environments are also 
avoided differently at different times, so that safety, accessibility, images, and mental 
maps, say of a given urban area, will be very different at different times.  
 
Thus images, schemata, and meanings impose constraints on people's location in space 
and time, and their movements, so that the organization of space and time are intimately 
connected.​ Such constraints on movement are based on the meaning that given areas and 
times have, and, in turn effect communication. Thus the organization of meaning and 
communication are linked. Moreover, the organization of space and time both reflects and 
influences the organization of communication. Thus environments used by humans (and, 
in fact, by many if not all animals) involves the organization of time, meaning and 
communication as well as of space. The joint effect of all four can be captured by bearing in 
mind, asking and trying to answer the question: ​who does what, where, when, 
including/excluding whom (and why)?  
 
I will leave it to the readers to relate these four variables to the various components and 
expressions of culture. They will find that the task is feasible and, with a little bit of 
practice, not too difficult.  
 
(iii) The environment as a system of settings (within which systems of activities take 
place). 
As I use it here the concept of "setting" is a combination of the idea of a behavior setting (as 
developed by Roger Barker and his students) and that of a role setting (as used by Erving 
Goffman). A setting comprises a milieu with an outgoing system of activities, where the 
milieu and the activities are linked by rules as to what is appropriate and hence permitted 
or prohibited. These rules, while always specific to setting and situation also vary for 
different groups, i.e. with culture. The physical attributes are cues that act as mnemonics, 
reminding people about the situation and hence about appropriate behavior, making 
effective co-action possible.​11  
 
Settings are not the same as neighborhoods, streets, buildings or even dorms. Any one of 
these may contain a number of settings, at larger scales very many. Therefore, in terms of 
settings, spatial organization is at least partially independent of the plans of settlements, 
buildings or rooms as defined by walls and the like. A single plan unit can comprise 
different settings at one time. Moreover, the same space can become different settings, or 
systems of settings, at different times. For example, a vacant piece of land may become a 
market, a political rally or a theatrical performance (each of which comprises multiple 
settings in itself), a soccer field, a playground and so on. In such cases people and objects 
are used to establish the setting boundaries, and to provide cues within the larger space 
defined by fixed-feature elements.  
 
Settings cannot be considered singly but are organized into systems within which systems 
of activities take place. They are organized and linked in varying and complex ways not 
only in space, in terms of their proximities, linkages and separations but also in time-in 
terms of their sequential ordering. They are also organized in terms of their centrality, the 
rules that apply and which cues communicate them, who is included or excluded and so 
on. All of these are culturally variable. It follows that the extent of any system and the 
settings of which it is composed in any given case, cannot be assumed a priori but need to 
be discovered. This applies not only to the dwelling in its larger setting, what I have called 
the house-settlement systems, but also to the dwelling itself which can be shown to be a 
system of settings within which given systems of activities occur. Unless this is taken into 
account, cross-cultural comparisons of dwellings are likely to be highly misleading. It also 
follows that what happens in one part of the system greatly influences what happens, or 
does not happen, elsewhere. This is because activities occur within the whole cultural 
landscape which can be understood as a system of settings.​12  
 
By conceptualizing environments in general, and specific environments (such as dwellings 
or neighborhoods) in these ways it becomes feasible and, in fact, not too difficult to relate 
them to the various components and expressions of culture as discussed earlier. This is not 
feasible if that is not done, either for environment or culture.  
 
The variability of environments--on relating activity 
systems to environments  
I have ​already referred to the variability of human groups (defined by their cultures​). As 
one example, consider that today there are still approximately 6,000 languages in existence, 
with some small areas (like Papua-Niugini) having hundreds. Other aspects of culture 
expressed in human groups are also highly variable. One of these which I find increasingly 
to be most important is ​the variability of built environments​. The question is why the 
relatively few things people do in, for example, dwellings (which all groups possess and 
which therefore provides a good example)​13​ requires so many different types and forms of 
dwellings, distributed in such different ways over the face of the earth, in such different 
types and forms of settlements and so on. The answer has to do with culture and, more 
specifically to the way I conceptualized it earlier.  
 
The best way of beginning to answer the question of ​why environments such as dwellings 
and settlements should be so varied when what people do in them is so much less varied is 
to begin with the notion of activities.​ As is the case with "culture" and "environment" (and 
even "dwelling"), "activity" is not a self-evident concept and also needs to be clarified. This 
involves some measure of dismantling.  
 
Recall that activities are expressions of lifestyle, values, and ultimately of culture. But, at a 
finer level of resolution, any activity can be seen as involving four components. These are:  

The activity itself 

How it is carried out 
How it is associated with other activities and combined 
into activity systems 
The meaning of the activity 
 
 
It is important to note that variability with lifestyle and, ultimately, culture goes up as one 
moves from the activity itself, through a way of carrying it out, the systems of which it is 
part, and its meaning. As just one example consider cooking. All people cook, in fact 
Lévi-Strauss regards it as a major discriminant between the human and the non-human: 
Only humans transform raw food into cooked.​14​ How people cook (or otherwise transform 
food) is already extraordinarily varied. How cooking is associated with other activities 
varies even more. The meaning of cooking, its ritual or social significance is the most 
variable. This also involves a shift in emphasis from the manifest (instrumental) aspects of 
any activity to its latent aspects such as meaning. The specific cooking arrangements 
(including the design of what we call kitchens) responds to the latent aspects - hence its 
variability. This also applies to all other settings, and to other activities - working, 
shopping, and recreation.  
 
It follows that because the variability of activities increases as one moves to their latent 
aspects, this begins to explain the extraordinary variety of built environments meant to 
accommodate, be congruent with, and supportive of, apparently many fewer activities: 
Links with specific cultures are more pronounced at the latent end. This also suggests that 
the distinction commonly made between "function" and "meaning" is misconceived. 
Meaning is not only an important aspect of function but it is often the most important 
function because it leads to the specific attributes of settings and environments. ​Thus, this 
type of analysis of activities (linked through lifestyle and values to culture) is critical both 
in analysis, i.e. in explaining why environments are the way they are, and in design, i.e. in 
suggesting how they should be so as to respond to users in terms of their culture. It helps 
to understand the different orders, differing notions of comfort and environmental quality, 
different standards and responses to climate and site, the use or non-use of available 
technology and so on.​ Such analysis can also begin to substitute users' interpretations of all 
of those for designers' interpretations.  
 
Also, ​since one cannot look at single activities but must consider systems of activities, 
variability increases there also. Such systems vary among different groups in terms of the 
specifics of these systems, the order or sequence in which individual activities occur, the 
nature of these sequences, ​how activities are linked in space and time (where and when 
they occur, their proximities and separations), who is included or excluded and so on. 
Since systems of activities occur in systems of settings, as discussed earlier, and what 
happens in some settings depends on what happens in others, it is important to 
"distribute" activities among settings​. The relationships between these two systems are 
highly variable also in terms of schemata, meanings, and the rules that apply in various 
settings. It is these that make certain uses "inappropriate" in certain settings and in 
addition to the problem of "inappropriate" orders discussed earlier, leads to the rejection of 
certain environments, to the extent that they may be labeled "slums" on that basis.  
 
Lifestyle and environment  
Activities follow directly from lifestyles which themselves reflect values. These​ are still 
very concrete and operational, but also more general than activities. This makes them a 
particularly useful aspect of culture in relation to environments (see Fig. 3).  
 
I will, therefore, discuss just a few aspects of lifestyle in relation to built environments.  
Recall that one of the definitions of culture was in terms of the way of life of a group and, 
in that sense lifestyles help define groups. The many variables that have been used to 
define groups cross-culturally and through history, such as age, sex, initiation, ethnicity, 
race, ideology, religion, caste, tribe, occupation, and class tend to become relevant 
regarding environments only when they lead to specific lifestyles. These also tend to be 
particularly useful today, when many of the above variables do not in themselves lead to 
specific environments and when, say in the U.S., one can belong to more than one of the 
traditional categories, it is the resultant lifestyle that is relevant.​ This also applies to the 
various "special user groups" used in EBS and design. Thus "lifestyle" alone needs to be 
considered in this connection. This has proved most useful in a variety of other fields, such 
as advertising, marketing, developer housing design and so on, as already mentioned.  
 
Lifestyle itself, like culture, has been defined in many different ways. These definitions 
have been reviewed and an operational definition of lifestyle derived,​15​ which I have been 
using since the 1970's and which I find most useful. This defines lifestyle as the result of 
the ​choices people make about how to allocate resources (money, time, effort and so on). 
This can be further operationalized and expressed graphically as a profile that makes it 
easy to visualize and to handle.​16  
 
There is another set of reasons why lifestyle is so useful. The first has to do with the fact 
that a major effect of environments on people (the second of the three basic questions of 
EBS) i​s through choice, through habitat selection​. In effect, people leave undesirable or 
unsuitable environments and move towards those positively evaluated (within certain 
constraints, of course)​17​. The ​two sets of choices will then tend to be harmonious. People 
will make them congruent to obtain or achieve environments congruent with their 
lifestyles and supportive of them and this is further improved through modification.  
 
The choice of environments also comprises a set of attributes or qualities which can also be 
represented as a profile of environmental quality​, and the two profiles can be matched. 
This process is, once again, both feasible and not too difficult.​18​ That choice is also clearly 
modified by various constraints that determine how closely one can approach an ideal 
environmental quality profile.  
 
Design itself can be visualized as a choice process​ - what, over the years, I have called the 
choice model of design. On this view choices are made about which courses of action are to 
be made among alternatives. In this process certain criteria are used to decide which 
possibilities to include or exclude. I have already discussed in connection with cultural 
landscapes the role of schemata, ideals and the like in this process and also the role of rules 
that lead to systematic choice. The process represented in this model is general and applies 
to vernacular, popular and high style design of products, buildings and cultural 
landscapes. What varies are the schemata and ideal, the criteria used, their order of 
application, who applies them (i.e. makes choices) and the time spans involved.​19​ Much 
more could be said about this model of design and how it relates to various aspects of 
culture. At this point I just wish to draw attention, once again, to the common theme of 
choice in both lifestyle and design, i.e. the making of environments compared to the 
choosing and their subsequent modification above. What I am emphasizing is the common 
theme of choice in lifestyle and these other aspects of environments that help in relating 
the two.  
 
Social variables and environment  
The third aspect or expression of culture which I suggested was particularly useful in 
relation to environments was ​social variables​. It can be shown fairly easily that the types of 
variables listed - social networks, status, roles, institutions, kinship and family - are rather 
easily related to specific features and attributes of environments. For example, social 
networks can help define urban neighborhoods and even larger units, explain the use of 
urban space and settings and can also plan a most useful role in housing analysis and 
design.​20​ Status is easily related to location, space organization and access, size, colors, 
materials and the like.​21​ Institutions such as recreation, commerce, shopping and the like 
can be shown to vary among different groups and can easily be related to the settings 
which they require. There is currently a large and growing literature on the effect of 
changing sex roles and family structure on housing, neighborhoods and other types of 
environments. Changes in kinship structures play a major role in developing countries and 
can be directly linked to changes in a large variety of settings and environments. In other 
words, once again the point is made - whereas "culture" as such cannot be related to 
environments, social variables like other aspects of culture can relatively easily be related 
to various components of environments.  
 
Conclusion  
This article has argued both for the centrality of culture in environmental design and for 
the difficulty, if not impossibility of using it at that level of generality. I have outlined a 
particular approach to conceptualizing both "culture" and "environment," suggesting ways 
to make these terms operational and hence usable.  
I will, therefore, leave at this point and suggest two things. First, if the argument makes 
sense, to follow up the various points in the (selected) list of further readings. Second, 
actually to try the suggested approach on various specific examples - either those in the 
readings or those relevant to, or of interest to, the readers. Only in these ways can this 
outline become more than what it is. But presenting it is the first, and essential, step.