Built environment,causality and urban planning

Informed by critical realist philosophy of science, this paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of the issue of causality within urban and planning research. The concept of causality dominating within certain influential disciplinary and philosophical traditions is difficult to reconcile with research into influences of the built environment on human actions. This paper promotes a conceptualizing of causality in terms of generative mechanisms operating in different combinations in normally non-closed systems, and discusses in what sense the built environment can be said to exert causal influences on human actions. In order to integrate knowledge about causal influences at the level of the individual and at the city level, a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods is recommended.