Perceptive City Lab
Perceptive City Lab, led by Associate Professor Dr Asya Natapov, pioneers interdisciplinary, experimental research blending urban design, planning, analytics, and behavioural sciences. Our mission is to uncover how the public realm—spaces in a city that are open to the public, including streets, squares, parks, large-scale public buildings, and other outdoor areas - affects human perception, cognition, wayfinding, activities, and social dynamics.
We are dedicated to empowering planning authorities, designers and stakeholders with human-centred, behaviourally grounded, and evidence-based knowledge and geospatial technologies to facilitate the creation of friendly and comfortable built environment, prioritising a healthy lifestyle, legibility, inclusivity, and wellbeing.
Research themes
Spatial perception
A well-established field in psychology and neuroscience, provides the foundation for our methods to examine how people experience urban environments. Through behavioural experiments in virtual reality, use of embedded behavioural systems and eye and body tracking, we uncover factors influencing leisure activity in cities, wayfinding in different urban layouts, functionality of urban features and resident satisfaction.
Interdependency of urban morphology and human behaviour
We study how urban form and physical attributes are linked to movement, activities, and co-presence through spatial analysis and modelling. This, in turn, enables a broader exploration of social issues such as segregation and loneliness. Our insight into the emergence and impact of these factors will inform the integration of community-led, bottom-up processes into morphological adjustments during design and placemaking.
Perception-driven tools
By leveraging empirical findings, we develop algorithmic methods for urban design and masterplanning and provide scholars and practitioners with reliable tools for assessing urban performance. We extend geospatial technologies and planning practices by integrating human-centred, vision-based, sensory-informed, and motion-aware perspectives.
Partners, collaborations and funders
