The psychologists of Hurba’s practice are experts in applied environmental psychology. Their initial job is to support employees and their managers in various business contexts, which are mainly changing.

The concept of Hurba was born after numerous professional meetings between psychologists, architects and urban planners.

The creation of Hurba results from the will of its founders to adapt the methodologies previously dedicated to interventions in companies, to the daily life in an urban environment: to reveal, to understand, to analyze the needs, the perceptions and the behaviours of the inhabitants and users of neighbourhoods, cities and territories in motion.

At the interface between science and practice, urban psychology translates the scientific discoveries of environmental psychology and social psychology from the point of view of the requalification of places of life.

Urban psychology puts the human at the heart of all its thoughts. It studies what people feel, look for and understand within their living environment…

Urban psychology focuses on fundamental issues such as urban rites, the urban freedom feeling or the sense of belonging to a group, the human scale, the immediate environment, the orientation, the density issues, the urban stress, the urban quality of life, the visual sequences, the urban routes, the accessibility, the living together, the urban culture, etc…

From the first missions, urban psychology proved to be a basic need for any development or construction plan intended for the well-being of the user.

Urban planning project cannot be successful if the individual for whom it is intended has not been consulted through a precise methodology.

The use of knowledge in human sciences and methodologies in applied environmental psychology allow to enter a new era of support of your urban projects through the analysis of perceptions (perceived quality, atmospheres, affects, sense of community), needs (social, material, relational, attachment and security) and human behaviours (rituals, paths, uses, etc.), in the context of built environment.

These are all keys that need to be analysed in order to promote both the attractiveness and the functionality of places, the support of change, the social bond and the quality of life.

Listening, against all assumptions, is the key word of Hurba’s positioning.

Prior to any intervention by teams of urban planners, landscapers, architects, the Hurba team aims at helping decision-makers (elected officials, directors, social landlords, developers, planners, etc.) to better take into account the human issues of their projects.

The methodological possibilities have multiplied. We work by means of individual and collective interviews (qualitative method) but also online questionnaires (quantitative method). Moreover, we are now able to analyse brain activity, eye movements, hormone releases or conduct investigations on a large number of people in a defined period of time.

Today, our methodologies enable to apprehend a city from the point of view of those who live it from inside to understand and facilitate the projects’ success in which man occupies an essential place.