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Restorative Cities: urban design for mental health and wellbeing
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.
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.
272 pages, Paperback
Published August 12, 2021
34 people are currently reading
619 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
April 13, 2022
Read for my Healthy Cities Class. As someone who is really interested in health planning for the built environment, I appreciate that this books is a culmination of case studies and facts that I utilize in design thinking all in one place. Now I don't necessarily have to search deep and wide for the sources when they are all so well put into this book. It is exciting to be in the urban planning field when we are on the cusp of having more discourse about health planning and strategizing our plans to improve mental health and wellbeing through design.
August 30, 2021
Restorative Cities is a clear, theoretically grounded primer on urban design for mental and community health. It's not an passionate plea for change, like so many other books on the topic. Instead, the authors explain concepts, theoretical frameworks, current research, and global examples of prosocial urban design. Each chapter follows the exact same pattern to explain a different concept; this may seem dry to a casual reader, but it's invaluable for a researcher, activist, or practitioner who wants to leverage this knowledge to effect change. As a newcomer to this discipline, I highly enjoyed learning from this book without having to wade through too much fluff. I'm sure it will be easy for me to reference specific topics as I need them in my future work.
December 12, 2021
Finally I finished reading through this book! I attended the online release event with the authors and bought it way back then and have been working through it, taking notes and doing background on the case studies they provide. In the end, I simply read through the last third for ease of time. From the perspective of an urban ecology major, I think it's a great entry point into the concept of what a healthy, community-centered city should look like. I enjoyed the emphasis on social interaction encouragement and intergenerational design. It's essentially a textbook in my opinion, with added summaries, case studies, and diagrams.
I did notice a few of the references made were to studies, which looked at themselves, I would not consider robust. But taken with a grain of salt, this field deserves alot more substantial research especially dealing with mental health crises often exacerbated in cities. The ultimate city following the "restorative city' design seems to already exist in common examples like Singapore (which I thought of several times throughout the book) and multiple European cities. It would be interesting to see these principles play out here in the US.
As always, it's difficult to achieve such a vision while also supporting mixed-income and diverse development, but that's for future books I hope!
I did notice a few of the references made were to studies, which looked at themselves, I would not consider robust. But taken with a grain of salt, this field deserves alot more substantial research especially dealing with mental health crises often exacerbated in cities. The ultimate city following the "restorative city' design seems to already exist in common examples like Singapore (which I thought of several times throughout the book) and multiple European cities. It would be interesting to see these principles play out here in the US.
As always, it's difficult to achieve such a vision while also supporting mixed-income and diverse development, but that's for future books I hope!
February 6, 2022
Restorative Cities: Urban Design for Mental Health and Wellbeing by Jenny Roe and Layla McCay is a think tank literature review disguised as a book. That’s not necessarily a bad thing but it a different from what you might expect from a book.
In the case of Restorative Cities, authors Roe and McCay review academic literature on the effects of the urban environment and urban design features on public health, specifically mental health. Seven chapters, identically organized, explores the literature on what they call the 7 pillars of restorative cities: the green (vegetation) city, the blue (water) city, the sensory city, the neighborly city, the playful city, and the inclusive city. So, for example, Roe and McCay discuss in the sensory city chapter how lighting, sound, skin sensation, and surface textures can influence mental health and suggest design amenities creating these sensations. Similarly, in the neighborly city chapter, they examine the evidence on the impact of social interactions on mental health and then address urban design traits that increase the likelihood of positive social interactions.
The shortcoming of the book, which is really a shortcoming of the current literature, is the lack of information on dosage and outcomes, as well as the interactions of various treatments. How shaded does an urban street need to be in order to create some of the effects found in the studies? What is the cost of providing an amenity compared to the cost of the illness it treats? Are the benefits of some amenities so modest they all but disappear when provided alongside other amenities.
These questions may sound a bit cold but urban amenities are expensive to build and maintain. Without out an understanding of dosage, Restorative Cities offers a prescription that’s hard to fill. Nonetheless, Roe and McCay have made available an important set of research for designers, public health experts, and other professionals whose decisions shape the built environment.
In the case of Restorative Cities, authors Roe and McCay review academic literature on the effects of the urban environment and urban design features on public health, specifically mental health. Seven chapters, identically organized, explores the literature on what they call the 7 pillars of restorative cities: the green (vegetation) city, the blue (water) city, the sensory city, the neighborly city, the playful city, and the inclusive city. So, for example, Roe and McCay discuss in the sensory city chapter how lighting, sound, skin sensation, and surface textures can influence mental health and suggest design amenities creating these sensations. Similarly, in the neighborly city chapter, they examine the evidence on the impact of social interactions on mental health and then address urban design traits that increase the likelihood of positive social interactions.
The shortcoming of the book, which is really a shortcoming of the current literature, is the lack of information on dosage and outcomes, as well as the interactions of various treatments. How shaded does an urban street need to be in order to create some of the effects found in the studies? What is the cost of providing an amenity compared to the cost of the illness it treats? Are the benefits of some amenities so modest they all but disappear when provided alongside other amenities.
These questions may sound a bit cold but urban amenities are expensive to build and maintain. Without out an understanding of dosage, Restorative Cities offers a prescription that’s hard to fill. Nonetheless, Roe and McCay have made available an important set of research for designers, public health experts, and other professionals whose decisions shape the built environment.
September 30, 2021
An amazing, thoroughly-researched look at how we can build our cities to be more - restorative, inclusive, reflective - for the people who live there.
The authors acknowledge that research is limited at this point, but the evidence that is out there is in support of more inclusive and participatory design. This is a great playbook on how a city can take incremental steps to drastically improve the mental well-being of it's residents. Here's to hoping more city planners and urban designers take heed!
The authors acknowledge that research is limited at this point, but the evidence that is out there is in support of more inclusive and participatory design. This is a great playbook on how a city can take incremental steps to drastically improve the mental well-being of it's residents. Here's to hoping more city planners and urban designers take heed!
November 15, 2023
เราจะใช้เมืองเพื่อ "ฟื้นฟู" สุขภาพกายและสุขภาพใจเราได้อย่างไร เล่มนี้มีบอกถึง 7 รูปแบบที่เกี่ยวข้อง ก็คือ
- เมืองสีเขียว มีพื้นที่สีเขียวไม่ว่าจะใหญ่หรือเล็ก
- เมืองสีฟ้า มีพื้นที่ที่เป็นน้ำ ไม่ว่าจะเป็นธรรมชาติหรือสร้างขึ้นเอง
- เมืองสีน้ำตาล [พอแล้ว! สีน้ำตาลอันนี้หลอก] เมืองแห่งผัสสะทั้ง 5
- เมืองที่เป็นมิตร ช่วยสร้าง คสพ ระหว่างคนในชุมชน
- เมืองแห่งกิจกรรม มีพื้นที่ให้ทำกิจกรรมโน่นนี่
- เมืองแห่งการเล่น มีพื้นที่ให้เล่น หรือได้ลองใช้ความคิดสร้างสรรค์
- เมืองที่รองรับความหลากหลาย ทั้งด้านเพศ อายุ สมรรถณะร่างกาย
แต่ละบท format คล้ายกัน มีงานวิจัยต่าง ๆ รองรับ ที่คิดว่าดีอย่างนึงก็คือเค้าเขียนเตือนเสมอว่า งานวิจัยพวกนี้มันอาจไม่ครอบคลุมกับทุกบริบท ท้ายบทจะมีตัวอย่างเมืองละก็ตัวอย่างแปลนชุมชนและเมืองที่เข้ากับบทนั้น ๆ
ถ้าเมืองประเทศเราพิจารณาอะไรลึกซึ่งเหมือนในเล่มบ้างก็ดี เช่นทางเท้าที่มันเดินได้จริง ๆ เลนปั่นจักรยาน พื้นที่สีเขียว หรือแม้แต่การสนับสนุนให้แต่ละวัฒนธรรมได้แสดงออกอะไรแบบนั้น บางทีมันก็ไม่ได้ใช้งบประมาณมาก แต่ก็ทำให้เมืองมันน่าอยู่ขึ้นได้
- เมืองสีเขียว มีพื้นที่สีเขียวไม่ว่าจะใหญ่หรือเล็ก
- เมืองสีฟ้า มีพื้นที่ที่เป็นน้ำ ไม่ว่าจะเป็นธรรมชาติหรือสร้างขึ้นเอง
- เมืองสีน้ำตาล [พอแล้ว! สีน้ำตาลอันนี้หลอก] เมืองแห่งผัสสะทั้ง 5
- เมืองที่เป็นมิตร ช่วยสร้าง คสพ ระหว่างคนในชุมชน
- เมืองแห่งกิจกรรม มีพื้นที่ให้ทำกิจกรรมโน่นนี่
- เมืองแห่งการเล่น มีพื้นที่ให้เล่น หรือได้ลองใช้ความคิดสร้างสรรค์
- เมืองที่รองรับความหลากหลาย ทั้งด้านเพศ อายุ สมรรถณะร่างกาย
แต่ละบท format คล้ายกัน มีงานวิจัยต่าง ๆ รองรับ ที่คิดว่าดีอย่างนึงก็คือเค้าเขียนเตือนเสมอว่า งานวิจัยพวกนี้มันอาจไม่ครอบคลุมกับทุกบริบท ท้ายบทจะมีตัวอย่างเมืองละก็ตัวอย่างแปลนชุมชนและเมืองที่เข้ากับบทนั้น ๆ
ถ้าเมืองประเทศเราพิจารณาอะไรลึกซึ่งเหมือนในเล่มบ้างก็ดี เช่นทางเท้าที่มันเดินได้จริง ๆ เลนปั่นจักรยาน พื้นที่สีเขียว หรือแม้แต่การสนับสนุนให้แต่ละวัฒนธรรมได้แสดงออกอะไรแบบนั้น บางทีมันก็ไม่ได้ใช้งบประมาณมาก แต่ก็ทำให้เมืองมันน่าอยู่ขึ้นได้
April 13, 2022
Read for my Healthy Cities course--found the concepts really coherently explained and valuable for thinking about restorative urbanism, but I think they could dig more deeply into ideas of equity and inclusivity.
March 11, 2024
Read for a paper
March 31, 2024
Great vision on what towns and cities could be. Fully thought out with all avenues considered.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews