From Oboist to Urban Innovator
“Musicians handle time—we take a note from the future, play it in the present, and it instantly becomes the past,” says Nick Tyler, offering a glimpse into how his early career as a professional oboist shaped his thinking. While music might seem unrelated to urban planning, it profoundly influenced how he has approached problem-solving: with creativity, fluidity and attention to the human experience of time and space.
Nick’s transition into playing a role in designing cities was anything but conventional. “I sort of ended up in this world by accident,” he admitted. After completing a master’s in transportation planning, he delved into understanding the minds of Brazilian engineers building high-capacity bus systems. He soon realised that traditional engineering models were too rigid and out of sync with how people actually think and behave. This realisation set the stage for a career dedicated to blending disciplines and pushing boundaries.
“Engineering is often about making up your mind,” he noted. “But real creativity lies in undoing your mind—being open to new ways of thinking.” That ethos underpins Nick’s approach to urban design, where he fuses insights from music, philosophy, psychology and neuroscience to reshape how cities work for people.
PEARL: A Laboratory for Urban Change
At the heart of Nick’s work lies PEARL, a pioneering research facility at University College London designed to simulate urban environments. “I built PEARL to create illusions of urban spaces, so we can study how people’s brains and bodies react to stimuli like light, sound, and movement,” he explained. By controlling every element of the environment, from acoustics to visual cues, PEARL allows researchers to isolate and understand the subtleties of human behaviour in cities.
One memorable project tackled the issue of ‘floating bus stops’ where pedestrians must cross a cycle lane to a little raised island between the sidewalk / pavement, bike lane and then the road to wait for and board a bus. “The very existence of the bus stop in that form created a sense of fear,” Nick revealed. “It wasn’t just about the physical design; it was about why we create spaces that cause fear in society.” PEARL’s findings shifted the conversation from technical fixes, like lane dimensions and physical specifications to deeper questions about how urban spaces affect our subconscious.
On paper, and in a model, those floating bike lanes seem quite sensible. It keeps the bike out of traffic, where the cars are significant risk to colliding with and squashing cyclists and it keeps the pedestrians safe on what feels like a second pavement. In reality though, it brings bus passengers and cyclists into a proximity that impacts psychology. The person on two wheels has a totally different mindset to the one on two feet.
Bikes work because they are in motion, so the obvious thing for a cyclist to do is to keep it in motion, narrowing their focus and attention farther ahead than if they were walking. This natural response to the need to stay upright, impacts their ability to also manage what is happening in a more immediate vicinity. On the other hand, the pedestrian is more concerned with their immediate environment, a few metres around them, to maintain their feeling of safety. The floating bus stop places these two mindsets in conflict.
“Cyclists narrow their focus to stay upright, which makes them less aware of pedestrians,” he explained. “It’s not their fault, it’s just how the brain works.”
The floating bus stop project revealed that the design itself induced fear in pedestrians, even before any interaction with cyclists. “Your brain is constantly predicting the next few milliseconds to keep you safe,” he reflects, “When the environment feels unpredictable, it triggers a fight-or-flight response.”
He also highlighted the mismatch between human behaviour and urban design. “We model cities as if people behave uniformly and rationally,” he noted. “But real life is messy. People hesitate, get lost, or make sudden decisions.” Understanding these nuances is key to creating safer, more intuitive urban spaces.
Our conversation using this example did go on for a while, so if you’re into the philosophy of bus stops, well this is the podcast for you!
For Nick though, PEARL isn’t just a laboratory; it’s a tool for reimagining how cities can be designed to prioritise human well-being. “It’s not about making things look right on paper, it’s about understanding how people actually feel and behave.”
Designing for People, Not Codes
Nick is deeply critical of the rigid codes that dominate engineering and urban design. “Engineering education has been about learning codes,” he noted. “But what if the standard wasn’t lighting specification but what you need to see, like a person in black at 200 meters away?”
This outcome oriented approach challenges traditional thinking. For instance, lighting codes for train stations (ah yes, another favourite topic for Iain!) typically dictate brightness levels. But PEARL’s research suggested a more human-centric standard: ensuring visibility of passengers on platforms. “One station might need different lighting than another to achieve the same outcome,” Nick explained. “The code should focus on the purpose, not just the numbers.”
Nick’s philosophy extends beyond lighting. When addressing train horn standards, he challenged regulators to rethink their metrics. “What do you want the horn to do?” he asked. By focusing on the desired outcome—warning track workers effectively—he opened the door to more innovative, context-specific solutions.
“Standards should serve people, not constrain creativity.”
We each need to carry the concept of being ‘accessible’ in our mind as a state of being, and not fall back on just making the physical hardware accessible while ignoring the people bit. Accessibility needs to be in our mind at all times, and not externalised onto some piece of kit.
Maslow’s Hierarchy: It’s Not What You Think
We get into exploring a fresh perspective on Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs, that turns out to be a bit of a legend in how we understand it vs. how it was first understood. “Maslow never intended it to be a hierarchy,” Nick explained. “The pyramid we all know was added later by others; Maslow himself thought of these needs as overlapping and dynamic.”
In his original work, Maslow described human needs as interconnected and context-dependent. “It’s less about climbing a ladder and more about finding balance,” Nick elaborated. “At different moments, different needs—like shelter, community or creativity—take priority based on circumstances.”
This reimagining of Maslow’s work aligns with Nick’s philosophy of urban design. “Cities shouldn’t just prioritise one aspect of living,” he said. “We need to think about how all these elements … safety, social connection and fulfilment interact to create thriving communities.” With this shifting focus from rigid hierarchies to adaptable systems, Nick argues we can design urban environments that meet the diverse and evolving needs of their inhabitants.
Community as the Heart of Urban Design
For Nick, the ultimate goal of urban design is fostering social connection. “Social connectedness is essential for survival.”
He envisions cities as networks of smaller, interconnected communities where people’s likes, wants, and needs are met locally. “Why do we think we need to move so much?” he asked. “We’ve built systems that create unnecessary movement, but we’ve forgotten why.”
Nick shared a poignant question “What would increase your well-being? The ability to greet a stranger on the street and feel safe doing it.” This simple act of sociality, he argued, is a cornerstone of human happiness. “If we design cities that encourage these small moments of connection, we’ll create places where people truly thrive,” he said.
In some ways, his philosophy challenges us to rethink mobility itself. “We’re hooked on having to go somewhere … but we’ve almost forgotten why.” There’s a danger this takes us into 15-minute cities and conspiracy theory territory but let’s try not to go there for a second.
He talks about a future where cities are designed around human needs rather than movement. By focusing on local amenities and flexible working patterns, we could reduce congestion, improve well-being and build more resilient communities. “The primary goal isn’t to facilitate movement … but to encourage thriving lives.”
Now, that’s something that someone commuting into and across London on the train, bus or Tube could likely get behind. We’re social creatures, designed to move, not be constrained in one place. How we design the city more purposefully is what got this whole series started in the first place, and people like Nick are deep into understanding the psychology and the science behind that.
(you, like me, probably want to work there too right!?)
We move to wrap up on the magic wand question and Nick’s answer fits the person I’ve got to know over a couple of chats; “I want to enable people to express their sociality in public spaces.”
He recounted a personal experiment: saying good morning to bus drivers. “At first, they were shocked,” he laughed. “But after a few weeks, they started saying good morning back. That small interaction created a ripple of positivity.”
Nick’s vision is a world where these moments aren’t exceptions but the norm. “If we could foster that sense of connection, we’d solve so many of the challenges we face today.”
How can we not want more thinking like this in our cities, so we can blend the engineering brilliance with the psychological weirdness, to work in practice, as well as on paper.
To Being Challengers.
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