Maslow and bus stops
- ntyler31
- 21 hours ago
- 5 min read
Some might recognise the points identified in the image above, but not in this form. The more usual version of the expression of needs is that of what is known as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. A typical version of this hierarchy is in the image below. In this version, it is seen as a hierarchy in order to differentiate between ‘what is important’. So, for example, Physiological needs need to be met before Safety needs become important. "Self-Actualisation" (the "desire to become the most that one can be" can only be achieved after everything else has been tackled. It makes sense. Kind of.
But this is not what Maslow said.
Maslow never mentioned “hierarchy”, and never suggested an ordering of needs in this way. This was all created by others after reading his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation[1]. I always felt a bit uncomfortable with the usual formulation so I delved a bit further into the history.
Maslow was very curious about why people did what they did, and decided to study an example by living with the Black Foot Tribe, an indigenous community in north America for six months in 1938 so that he could discuss with them how they decided to do things. Thanks to extensive work by Taju Ravilochan[2], it is now possible to see what Maslow originally intended. There was no pyramid. The image was much more that of a circle, with sectors for four higher level needs (Physical, Cognitive, Emotional and Spiritual), with areas associated with these containing features (for example, food, water, life purpose, community relationships, service, esteem and so on). The point was that there was a need to maintain a balance between all of these. Decisions were made in order to help maintain and strengthen these relationships. This is not a hierarchy, it is a balancing of processes and ideas, an equilibrium.
So why do we talk about "Maslow’s hierarchy"? Well, Maslow could not publish his ideas, mainly because the conventional journals would not publish something that had emerged from an indigenous community. So Maslow had to expunge all references to how he had developed the ideas and to present it in words. It was other people who supplanted the idea of a hierarchy. But in doing so they lost the whole heart of the idea: living in a community means seeking that equilibrium between physical, emotional, cognitive and spiritual needs. The best decisions balance these.
I have tried to capture this in the diagram that heads this note. In this diagram, the four main drivers of need (Physical, Cognitive, Emotional, Spiritual) are levelled out and equally important. More important still though is that they are to be achieved in balance at the same time for each situation or decision. So every decision is weighed against all four needs and a balance struck. There is no sense that you need to satisfy one before another, or that one is prioritised over another. The example categories for each of these main drivers are shown in the circle. So every decision explicitly considers, for example, Life Purpose, Community Actualisation, Water, and the sense of membership of the community. This is a model of allocentric thinking, where, without any special effort, the relationships between self and community are brought into the centre of the decision-making process. It could be that for some decisions there is more of a bias towards, say ‘food’ than in other cases, but they are all considered and the overall balance is maintained. So, for example, although the ‘physical’ need driven by hunger might be prioritised in a decision, and a journey to a food shop is undertaken, how that journey is made would incorporate thinking about the relationship between the individual and the rest of the community, life purpose and how the community can be made the best that could be (Community Actualisation) in the process. In the hierarchy version, such a decision would be made at the lowest level in the hierarchy and is a long way away from, for example, ‘self-actualisation’ (how the individual might be "the best they can be"), and the relationship between the individual and the community is simply not considered at all.
This turns into, for example, how a journey is made. If on foot, the chances of enhancing relationships with the community are much greater than if in a car, and the negative effects on the community, of congestion, pollution and so on, would be much less.
Maslow's Theory of human motivation is about commmunity and relationships with others, not about how an individual seeks self satisfaction.
This also affects how we design our environments. Think about a bus stop, which is part of the mobility system that could enable that individual’s journey to the food shop. How do we design the bus stop so that it can enable that journey for everyone so that it meets their Physical, Cognitive, Emotional and Spiritual Needs? This will have implications for the use of the kerb space (it means, for example, that there could be no parking at the bus stop), which might affect others in the community. The "Maslow Circle" helps to support the decision about where the bus stop is as well as the operational details of its design, so that the balance can be maintained for the community as a whole and the individuals concerned.
This is why the process has to include consideration with the community about such matters. How else are we to know the intricacies of this balance? It also means we need to understand how the design affects different aspects of these relationships. This is where PEARL comes in. We can take a piece of infrastructure, like a bus stop, and examine it with people to learn how different aspects of the bus stop affect the balance. For example, in recent experiments at PEARL[3], the ‘Floating Island’ bus stop, where a cycle lane passes between the bus stop and the footway, induced high levels of stress for people with sight loss. They could not detect the presence of a cyclist until after the cyclist had passed them (the usual indicator was ‘the breeze’ from the movement of the cyclist as they passed). So, at this kind of bus stop, people with sight loss are in a state of fear that they know that something could happen to them but are not sure if, when, or exactly how. Other people, including neurodiverse people, stressed about feeling trapped in the bus stop island, or were confused by the design. These responses show up in physiological stress data, such as electrodermal activity and heart rate variability, both of which indicated increased stress levels, simply from being at the bus stop. We should not be designing infrastructure that inflicts fear on people. The floating island bus stop clearly breaks the balance of the Maslow Circle. The question then becomes how do we design a bus stop which maintains the balance of the Maslow Circle?
That is work to come…
[1] Maslow A (1943) A Theory of Human Motivation, Psychological Review, 50, 370-396.
[2] See https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-06-18/the-blackfoot-wisdom-that-inspired-maslows-hierarchy
[3] These experiments were commissioned by Guide Dogs and undertaken at PEARL. The final report is available at: https://gd-prod.azureedge.net/-/media/project/guidedogs/guidedogsdotorg/files/how-you-can-help/campaigning/ucl-guide-dogs---designing-for-inclusion-full-report-sept-2024-final.pdf, Accessed 15 April 2025
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