Restorative Cities

Abstract

Overcrowding, noise and air pollution, long commutes and lack of daylight can take a huge toll on the mental well-being of city-dwellers. With mental healthcare services under increasing pressure, could a better approach to urban design and planning provide a solution? The restrictions faced by city residents around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic has brought home just how much urban design can affect our mental health – and created an imperative to seize this opportunity. Restorative Cities explores a new way of designing cities, one which places mental health and wellness at the forefront. Establishing a blueprint for urban design for mental health, it examines a range of strategies – from sensory architecture to place-making for creativity and community – and brings a genuinely evidence-based approach that will appeal to designers and planners, health practitioners and researchers alike - and provide compelling insights for anyone who cares about how our surroundings affect us. Written by a psychiatrist and public health specialist, and an environmental psychologist with extensive experience of architectural practice, this much-needed work will prompt debate and inspire built environment students and professionals to think more about the positive potential of their designs for mental well-being.

Is ‘another’ psychiatry possible?

“…To address these requires more than community support and easy access to mental health services. But it does not require us to imagine utopian cities but to listen to the voices of those who experience distress about what they find pathological, and what might be potentially salutogenic, in the reality of their everyday lives – maybe fewer pawn shops and bookmakers, better food stores, small parks, safe spaces for children to play, cheap and readily available early childcare and sure-start facilities, and, of course, some financial security perhaps through such methods as unconditional cash transfers or universal basic income (Roe & McCay, 2021; N. Rose et al, 2021; N. Rose & Fitzgerald, 2021). Perhaps many years of medical training does not equip psychiatrists to understand such matters let alone engage in them.…”

Small-scale urban design interventions: A framework for deploying cities as resource for mental health and mental health literacy

“…One of the few models that focus specifically on mental health promotion in cities is the Restorative Cities Framework by Roe and McCay (2021) . The model links numerous established theories and paradigms from design and architecture research (e.g., biophilic design and salutogenic design) and psychology (e.g., Attention Restoration Theory ; Kaplan and Kaplan, 1989 ).…”

“…First, building on the Restorative Cities Framework ( Roe and McCay, 2021 ), design interventions in the urban context can offer or stimulate activities that proved to be beneficial for mental health and wellbeing. These include for example physical activity ( Tamminen et al, 2020 ), exercises in mindfulness ( Davidson et al, 2003 ), contact with nature (e.g., Alvarsson et al, 2010 ; Ryan et al, 2014 ; Salonen et al, 2022 ), and social interaction ( Umberson and Montez, 2010 ).…”

“…Furthermore, both activities and information can increase coping skills of people living with mental health problems. With this element, we explicitly go beyond other frameworks (e.g., Roe and McCay, 2021 ; Bornioli and Subiza-Pérez, 2022 ) mainly focusing on restoration. Both functions of the proposed interventions pose potential synergistic effects.…”

“…Therefore, we argue that urban environments not only pose risks but also act as an insufficiently considered resource for mental health of citizens and to address mental health issues in the public space in a low-threshold way ( van der Wal et al, 2021 ). Whereas many other frameworks (e.g., Vollmer et al, 2020 ; Roe and McCay, 2021 ; Bornioli and Subiza-Pérez, 2022 ) eventually advocate for long term urban planning approaches to foster mental health, we aim at shedding light on smaller and easily implementable design interventions that make use of the given surroundings and its inherent potentials. Without neglecting the profound utility of approaches that are more comprehensive and include long term urban planning processes, this complementary concept allows cities to quickly address mental health and mental health literacy in a cost and time effective manner.…”