Beyond Survival: Aesthetics and Justice in Displacement

Dr. Devora Neumark and Stephanie Acker

Clark University: Designing Just Cities

October 2, 2025

Syrian refugees painted murals to improve aesthetics in Zaatari Refugee Camp. Camp residents painting a mural, Zaatari, Jordan.

Photo: Joel Artista, 2017

Summary

Delivered to students in Clark University’s Designing Just Cities course on October 2, 2025, this co-presentation by Dr. Devora Neumark and Stephanie Acker argued that beauty and aesthetics are essential infrastructure in displacement contexts rather than optional luxuries. Challenging the implicit reliance on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in humanitarian policy, the presentation drew on neuroarchitecture research by Maleki and Bayzidi and clinical studies by Cardillo and Chatterjee, who demonstrate that beauty is “a biologically relevant stimulus with measurable cognitive and emotional effects,” to establish that the built environment shapes wellbeing, stress regulation, and social cohesion within seconds of entering a space. Four global case studies, including participatory tent transformations in Jeddah Camp, Iraq; West Bank gardens tended by Palestinian refugees; Casa Pintada’s collaborative house-painting across 44 neighbourhoods in Colombia; and culturally rooted reconstruction in Deh Kamangar, Pakistan, illustrated how aesthetic expression restores dignity, agency, and social cohesion. The presentation concluded by advancing aesthetic justice as a necessary foundation for designing cities built not only for survival but for flourishing.

Key Takeaways

Beauty is foundational infrastructure for designing just cities, not ornament or afterthought. Neuroscience research by Maleki and Bayzidi establishes that 95% of our decisions occur unconsciously, driven by sensory stimuli processed within two seconds of entering a space, while clinical studies by Cardillo and Chatterjee link exposure to beauty in built environments to reduced anxiety, lower cortisol levels, and better healing outcomes. These findings validate what displaced communities already practise instinctively: that aesthetic experience is biologically and socially necessary for recovery and dignity.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs has shaped humanitarian shelter policy to treat aesthetics as premature or optional (at best), reinforcing what the script describes as staff attitudes like “be grateful you at least have food and shelter.” In reality, needs are not sequential; belonging, dignity, and sensory wellbeing overlap with and are inseparable from survival, particularly in crisis contexts where people may inhabit supposedly temporary shelters for decades.

Four global case studies, spanning Jeddah Camp in Iraq, Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank, Casa Pintada across 44 neighbourhoods in Colombia, and Deh Kamangar in Pakistan, reveal a consistent pattern: communities across vastly different contexts instinctively prioritise aesthetic expression as foundational to recovery. In each case, residents had to navigate, resist, or collaborate with institutional control to assert their aesthetic agency, demonstrating that even within severe constraints, people create pathways to cultural expression and environmental self-determination.

Decisions about shelter design are typically made by institutions rather than residents, reinforcing power imbalances in crisis contexts. Authentic co-creation, as modelled in Kamangar where residents led aesthetic choices from the outset, requires moving beyond asking “Do you like option A or B?” to asking “What colours, patterns, and symbols represent home and healing for you?” This shift honours residents as experts in their own sensory and cultural needs rather than passive recipients of predetermined design.

Aesthetic justice is a practical necessity with measurable impacts, not merely an aspirational ideal. The Casa Pintada project reported that 95% of participants experienced improved trust and cooperation and over 90% reported advancement in social integration. Advancing aesthetic justice in just cities requires embedding neuroaesthetic insights into design standards, funding community capacity-building as infrastructure, enabling interdisciplinary collaboration between artists, planners, and residents, and actively dismantling power structures that exclude marginalised voices from design governance.

Implications for Practitioners

Embed aesthetics in shelter standards and planning from the outset: Humanitarian agencies and shelter coordinators should treat aesthetics as a core component of shelter standards, embedding flexible funds and design allowances for personalisation, cultural expression, and participatory processes from the beginning of response planning. This means revising needs assessments, programme design documents, and operational guidelines to reflect that beauty shapes mood, cognition, and recovery trajectories from the moment people enter a space, and that restricting personalisation is not a neutral policy decision but one with measurable neurological and psychosocial consequences.
Integrate neuroaesthetic and neuroarchitecture research into design guidelines: Urban planners, architects, and shelter designers should draw on neuroaesthetic and neuroarchitecture research, including Maleki and Bayzidi’s findings on unconscious sensory processing and Cardillo and Chatterjee’s clinical evidence linking beauty to reduced anxiety and better healing outcomes, to inform design standards that prioritise sensory wellbeing, cultural identity, and emotional recovery alongside safety and structural durability.
Move beyond Maslow in policy and governance frameworks: Policymakers and governance bodies should actively dismantle the implicit reliance on Maslow’s Hierarchy that treats aesthetics, belonging, and dignity as secondary or premature concerns. Policy frameworks should recognise that needs are not sequential but overlapping and relational, and that cultural expression and sensory wellbeing are inseparable from survival, particularly in protracted displacement contexts where temporary shelters become decade-long homes.
Facilitate authentic co-creation by centring resident knowledge: Local NGOs, community organisers, and design practitioners should move beyond token consultation towards authentic co-creation by asking residents what colours, patterns, and spatial elements represent healing and home in their own cultural contexts, following the Kamangar model where community knowledge guided aesthetic choices from the outset. This approach reframes displaced individuals not as passive beneficiaries but as experts in their own sensory and cultural needs, whose knowledge is foundational to just design.
Embrace aesthetic justice as a design ethic and professional responsibility: Emerging planners, designers, researchers, and urban practitioners should recognise aesthetic justice not as a specialised add-on but as a foundational ethical commitment that runs through every stage of design, planning, and governance. This means actively challenging power structures that exclude marginalised voices from design decisions, pursuing interdisciplinary collaboration between artists, scholars, planners, and residents, and asking in every professional context: who gets to decide the shape and meaning of the built environment, and whose sensory lives and cultural identities does it reflect?