643. In a Good Place: How Built Environments Shape Agency, Wellbeing, and Behavior with Leidy Klotz

Episode notes

How has the new understanding of broken-windows theory helped to reinforce the importance of community ownership? How do built environments also transmit cultural messages? What does good workplace design actually look like? Leidy Klotz is a professor of engineering, architecture, and a behavioral scientist. He’s also the author of three books: Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less , Sustainability through Soccer: An Unexpected Approach to Saving Our World , and the latest, In a Good Place: How the Spaces Where We Live, Work, and Play Can Help Us Thrive . Greg and Leidy discuss Leidy’s new book on how the spaces where people live, work, and play affect wellbeing, behavior, and thriving, and why research on the mind–environment intersection remains fragmented across psychology, engineering, architecture, and HR. They discuss habituation and inattention (people missing what should be easily noticeable features like a fire extinguisher or UVA’s Memorial Gym), subconscious environmental impacts (noise stress, off-gassing), and the human need for agency through personalizing spaces, with examples from offices, nursing homes, refugee housing, and Mandela’s prison garden.