Built Environment

“Built environment” is a general concept that can be related with all the structures built by man to support human activity. This term comprises everything that is physically part of a city, a town, or village, such as buildings, roads, squares, parks, sidewalks, commercial signage, street furniture, and so on (see Fig. 1). We need to take into account that, in most cases, we evaluate the built environment in terms of its visual quality, and it is the aspect that makes better cities and urban spaces. In this sense, the built environment can contribute to making people’s life a pleasure or a pain. This entry attempts to focus on the visual quality to understand the importance and the impact of the built environment in people’s quality of life in order to help further discussion in the fields of architecture, planning, urban design, and environment psychology.