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The paper's main concern is about the nature and the process of the development of
environmental psychology as a discipline and its theories and methods which can be used in the mainstream of architectural and urban design thoughts and research. It is argued that there are many useful empirical concepts in environmental psychology, which may have a number of physical design implications. An understanding of concepts such as environ¬mental perception, people's needs, behavior-settings, and affordances of the environment is necessary for designers (e.g., architects, urban designers and landscape architects) in order to improve the quality of the environment and people's life per se. The relationship between people's behavior and physical (terrestrial) world is analyzed through reviewing existing theories and models in psychology. It is concluded that architecture students in
Iran suffer from the lack of environmental psychology courses in their curriculum and thus an essential academic task is in need for the establishment of the courses at least at post¬graduate levels in architectural schools.