‘Restorative Cities: Urban Design for Mental Health and Wellbeing’ is a nine-chapter book published in 2021 by Bloomsbury and co-authored by environmental psychologist Jenny Roe and psychiatrist and health systems specialist Layla McCay. Their collaboration has produced an inspiring, educational, and succinct tour of the intersection of applied psychology, urban planning and design, and public health. Indeed, because each author is involved in the discipline of psychology, they have been able to merge arguments made in urban planning theory with the experiential perspectives of people of various ages, abilities, and circumstances. Each chapter is written by both authors and follows a similar structure that makes comparing research findings throughout the book more accessible for readers. Chapters include a list of highlights, key concept definitions, and a portion on theory, followed by sections concerning how the chapter topic impacts mental health. Each chapter also incorporates a section focusing on design approaches and on case studies to illustrate examples of the chapter topic from around the world. Each chapter also includes a section about some of the modifiers of how restorative cities impact mental health (along with simple, informative figures throughout). These sections invite opportunities for readers to consider how and where more research is needed in the social and health sciences, and in urban planning and public sector management, to more fully understand human attitudes, behaviours, and emotions in relation to city living.
The authors start out by devoting the first chapter titled ‘Introduction to Restorative Urbanism’ to explaining concepts related to resilient urban planning, as well as the various facets of mental and social health in relation to city settings and experiences. This initial chapter orients the reader to a number of key theories, principles, and practices found in applied social science (and in environmental psychology in particular), such as attention restoration theory, salutogenesis, and restorative environment theory. It also explains important findings concerning urban social stress, such as crime and violence, noise and crowding, from public health and sociology domains. Rather than highlighting only evidence pointing to positive associations between specific urban models and mental health, the authors are successful in expressing the abundance of interdisciplinary literature that has provided arguments for and against the benefits of city life on human health and wellbeing for decades. They recognize that the compilation of information in the book is neither new nor radical – but that it may help government decision-makers, social scientists, medical professionals, planners, and city residents alike become more informed on the challenges of developing urban infrastructure by thinking of the health and quality of life of people as a driver instead of an outcome.
The next seven chapters set up the reader to conceptualize the seven pillars of the authors’ notion of a restorative city (that they then clarify in more detail in Chapter 9). These chapters introduce the transdisciplinary theories, applications, and examples of different forms of cities that promote and maintain resilience and health. The first three of these seven chapters (and, thus, pillars) are called ‘The Green City,’ ‘The Blue City,’ and ‘The Sensory City.’ They each place primacy on human physiological and psychological experiences of attributes common to the urban form. They also synthesize scholarly and practitioner-based knowledge about how cities that integrate plant life and water features, as well as other tactile, olfactory, visual, and auditory sensations can positively affect our mood, lower our stress levels, and mitigate psychological disorders across the lifespan.
Similarly, the next four chapters about ‘The Neighbourly City,’ ‘The Active City,’ ‘The Playable City,’ and ‘The Inclusive City’ explore evidence that cognitive and social health can be enhanced by restorative design approaches that account for the amount of space people have to interact with each other, as well as the level of access that people have to outdoor views, biodiversity, a sense of ambiance and affective atmosphere. Cultural aspects like being exposed to public art, having adequate forms of housing, safe and helpful transit options, and utilizing participatory common areas in the city are also discussed.
Although the authors note that these aspects are not altogether new (and helpfully reference the work of Danish architect Jan Gehl as a particular inspiration), the book goes beyond descriptive statements and expresses a scholarly balance of evidence for and against the benefits of many urban features on mental health. The authors are clearly aware of the negative facets of city life that arise for many – in particular for those in minority groups and other special populations. By communicating that city residents can experience states on a spectrum ranging from vibrancy, satisfaction, and safety to disquiet, disengagement, and despair is a productive reminder that studying the ways in which people relate to cities is complex and dynamic.
This sense of balance between the city as both helpful and hindering strengthens the aim of the ninth and final chapter of the book titled ‘The Restorative City.’ It translates what has been brought forward in the previous seven chapters into a framework of restorative urbanism using the seven pillars. This model, and the section discussing some of the practical implications of it in parks, streets, housing, and in terms of transportation, may help the readership of Cities & Health clarify their responsibilities as planners and policy-makers, developers, and health sector professionals working toward building resilient environments and communicating how to do so around the world. Indeed, the authors seem eager to point out that careful justification must often be made in order to make structural changes that align with our knowledge about how mental health can benefit from particular environmental characteristics. They often note that health and economic benefit analyses are needed to rationalize the spending of public dollars on initiatives – especially when a city is contending with issues of poverty, social injustice, and other challenges that must be considered by decision-makers.
Overall, the book ‘Restorative Cities: Urban Design for Mental Health and Wellbeing’ is both prudent and empowering as it consolidates a breadth of theoretical and practical findings from a number of related disciplines into a single resource for considering an urban paradigm motivated by mental health and human flourishing. Readers of the book are left with what feels like an accessible and modern handbook about how to envision and create humane urban settings that tend to the many psychosocial factors that matter now – and will for generations to come.
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Lindsay J. McCunn
Lindsay J. McCunn is a Professor of psychology at Vancouver Island University (VIU) and the Director of VIU’s Environmental Psychology Research Lab. She is also the Principal of McCunn & Associates Consulting. Lindsay’s research is published in a number of interdisciplinary journals that merge social science with engineering, sustainability, community planning, health care design, and facilities management. She is the Chair of the environmental psychology section of the Canadian Psychological Association, and the Chair-Elect of the Environmental Design Research Association. She is also a member-at-large of the Canadian National Panel for the International Union of Psychological Science and an Associate Editor for the journal Cities & Health.