Author's Forum on Urbanism – Restorative Cities:urban design for mental health and wellbeing

i'm going to give people a minute to come in then we'll get started today again we're letting people come in we can get started in just a moment welcome to on the park bench a public square conversation brought to you by the congress for the new urbanism on the park bench presents interactive conversations with thought leaders in new urbanism and allied industries providing an opportunity for the audience to engage in real time the webinar series is a platform for cnu members to engage debate and collaborate on pressing issues of the day the author's form is a series within on the park bench that discusses recently published books by urbanists or of interest to urbanists the producer is architect and urbanist adani we've got a very interesting program today on the book restorative cities urban design for mental health and well-being with authors jenny rowe and laila mckay in a discussion with interviewer stephanie bothwell so share your thoughts on hashtag on the park bench www.tinyurl.com [Music] otpb feedback and register for upcoming webinars um the next one is october 26th tuesday also at 12 noon they're all at 12 noon eastern time design for adaptation the climate challenge for new urbanism with elizabeth plato zyburk and interviewer moderator rick cole go to cnu.org resources slash on the park bench to find out more and of course don't forget cnu30 in oklahoma city save the dates uh march 23rd through 26 2022 we'll be seeing you's first in-person congress since 2019. i'm really excited about that that's going to be really a lot of fun and uh oklahoma city has done so much that other cities can learn from in terms of uh revitalizing their downtown bringing in amenities and making it a far more interesting place and livable place so learn how a clear commitment to urbanism careful financing and resident engagement can spark a city's renaissance learn more at cnu.org cnu30 and once again a really interesting program today uh with uh jenny rowe is one of our authors of restorative cities she's a professor and director of the center for design and health in the school of architecture university of virginia an environmental psychologist and former head of landscape architecture for an international architectural practice she has written more than 50 published peer-review manuscripts on the impact of the environment on health and well-being her other author leila mckay of restorative cities is director of the center for urban design and mental health in london and policy director of the nhs confederation the nhs confederation supports and speaks for the health care system in the united kingdom she is co-editor of the journal urban mental health and stephanie bothwell our interviewer is principal of stephanie bothwell urban in landscape design she is a cnu fellow that select group and established the aia center for livable communities she was a senior landscape architect for the city of boston i'm rob studeville editor of cnu's public square restorative cities urban design for mental health and well-being explores a new way for designing cities one which places mental health and wellness at the forefront the book investigates how overcrowding noise and air pollution long commutes and lack of daylight have taken a huge toll on the mental well-being of city dwellers with mental health care services under increasing pressure the authors look into how urban design and planning may provide solutions so we're going to have a presentation by jenny and layla and then an interview with uh with stephanie bothwell and then q a from the audience so please use the q a function of zoom uh to ask your questions as they occur to you and they'll probably be answered more or less in the order that they're asked with that i'm going to pass this along to jenny rowe and layla mckay we're on mute leila yeah welcome everyone and it is such a pleasure to be here today talking to you um as you heard i'm laila mckay and um i'm delighted to be joining you with jenny rowe to speak about our book um and the ideas within it but of course first of all we would love to know who we're speaking to today so why not pop into the chat box where you're dialing in from and if you want to also what you do because it's really interesting for us to know who's who's listening to to what we're saying today and get to know you all uh so yeah as mentioned in august this year jenny and i published a book with bloomsbury called restorative cities urban design for mental health and well-being and this book is exciting because it brings together the scientific evidence and practice to answer that question that interests so many of us around the world how can we design cities that can support and promote mental health and well-being it is a topic that um has not always been prioritized within the environmental design thinking and doing over the many years but what we're seeing here now is this growth in science and knowledge and interest and prioritization and with covet 19 now having really focused people's minds on what our environment does for our mental health and our physical health this is a really timely moment to be looking at where's the evidence and what can we do to really support mental health you can go to the mental health slide please because before we dive in i thought it would be helpful to make sure that we're all on the same page what exactly is mental health so according to the world health organization it's a state leila sorry the slides are not moving forward that happened to me yesterday as well but um i'm just going to try well you don't need a slide for this bit so i'll just talk about mental health while you fiddle around with it if that works for you um but yeah so the world health organization tells us that mental health is a state where a person can realize their own potential they can cope with the normal stresses of everyday life they can work productively and fruitfully and they can make a contribution to their community now when we think about people who have mental disorders that's usually people who experience some combination of problems with their thoughts emotions behaviors and relationships with other people that can cause distress it can impair personal functioning and that essentially can affect the extent to which um any of us can meet that definition of mental health that we just heard so i'm sure many of you are familiar with some types of disorders things like depression anxiety post-traumatic stress disorder dementia adhd schizophrenia what we know is that living in cities puts people at higher risk to various extents from a wide variety of mental health problems but you know promoting mental health and supporting people who have mental disorders it isn't just about medication and therapy now don't get me wrong it is incredibly important that everyone has access to good mental health care when they need it but in addition to that there is a wider public health approach to supporting and promoting mental health and that includes a role for the built environment so far urban design strategies for healthy cities have been almost entirely driven by physical health motives so the point of restorative cities is to drive a shift in city design to incorporate the incredibly important component that is mental health jenny do we feel that we can get to the next slide um i will talk about the restorative cities framework so it's a new concept that places mental health wellness and quality of life at the forefront of city design and planning with and here we have them and seven pillars that are illustrated here and they are set out in detail in our book in fact they form the basis of the book the key point of what's within our book is that it is evidence-based what we have here is built off of scientific evidence and thousands of studies in restorative environment research we draw from psychiatry geography architecture design planning public health engineering so many more sector research areas and we have brought them together to show how certain settings can foster recovery from mental fatigue from depression and stress and anxiety and how can planners and designers use that knowledge to design cities that better support mental health and well-being next slide i'm going to talk to you about these pillars and the first one the first attribute of a restorative city is the green city so access to natural environments is probably the most robustly evidenced attribute of the restorative city ample research tells us that it can reduce depression and stress it can improve brain function it can help manage the symptom severity of anxiety disorders of schizophrenia of adhd of dementia plus green urban space can help to reduce heat stress and improve sleep quality which are both really important for supporting people's mental health the impact of green space on mental health not all green space is created equal it's modified by things like the amount of green space that people have access to the accessibility how close is it to their home the type of green space the views of nature that people might have the perceived quality of that space its biodiversity how it's used the amount of exposure or the dose that people can receive in the course of their daily and when i mention those things of course covert 19 has shed particular light on the inequalities in people's access to and experiences of green space it's become very clear that we need more investment in poorer communities and improving access for children young people and older people because the research tells us those are the sections of the population that can particularly benefit from a mental health point of view next slide please so here are some extracts from the green city chapter of our book each chapter has the same format essentially it sets out the uh the evidence benefits to people's mental health for each of the restorative attributes then the mechanisms by which these are actually achieved followed by design guidelines at both a neighborhood and a city's scale this isn't a rule book essentially we're bringing together the evidence to provide you with guidance so that urban designers can interpret it flexibly according to whatever is appropriate for their location for their setting for the cultures involved for all the many variables that we know are associated with urban design and planning i'm now going to pass to jenny to talk you through the rest of the pillars well thank you laila and good afternoon everybody um on to the blue city now which is the second attribute in our framework these two overlap just distress so quite often blue which we by which you mean water most often found in cities with greens so all of these things do overlap possibly the most restorative attribute of any city is access to and contact with urban water the mental health benefits are much the same as for green space which layla just outlines so they are associated with a reduced risk of depression stress alleviation but the research um is much less uh well evidenced in this field just to touch upon what's so special about water what makes it more restorative is that increased opportunity for fascination for curiosity we can touch and play with it the water changes its form as it as it ripples over different surface textures it interacts with the light so it's a dynamic attribute in our urban landscape and this makes it more restorative this image is from sheffield in the uk which has um has a master plan that built itself around the use of water and when you visit sheffield um there's water everywhere really um and this is the entrance to the city from the train station but critical to water if it's going to benefit our mental health is that it's well maintained and that it's not allowed to get stagnant dirty or polluted and that picking up a theme that elena just mentioned access is equitable but also in relation to water access needs to be safe our third attribute of the restorative city is a sensory city the book brings together the scientific evidence that's now demonstrating how our senses can be harnessed within the urban environment to exert positive impacts on our mental health some of these sensory attributes include reducing unpleasant noise that makes sense but we've slightly forgotten i think about harnessing positive soundscapes sonic refuges for example bird sanctuaries or kinetic sculpture that interacts with the wind and makes a sound increasing opportunities for access to healthy food also well documented in the research but less well known is the benefit of positive auras and how smell harnesses feelings of place identity and belongingness increasing visual complexity another attribute that may well hold the key to reducing depression this slide shows an interactive lighting design by urban scale interventions there are creative place making practice that work in northern ireland this is londonderry and the bridge there has been associated with a high risk of suicide now what urban scale interventions did was advance a lighting display that could be manipulated by people's smartphones so they created up this interaction between the bridge its lighting and people's individual phones and it's that increase in cognitive engagement in our environment an aesthetic distraction that is having a significant effect in reducing suicide from this particular bridge the neighborly city this is hong kong where i laila lived for a year or two years i think um the neighborly city is really addressing how we use urban design to build strong social networks people with supportive social relationships are much less likely to develop mental health problems and more likely to recover from them quickly so some of the attributes of the nablus city that foster these social interactions are we might call them bumping places where we have impromptu encounters people we don't know so well at the market the coffee shop the dog park and we know that mixed-use walkable neighborhoods with fine grain shop fronts actually foster these types of interactions housing it needs to be designed to promote social interactions and networks across all ages mixed incomes and all ethnicities and parks and community gardens we've heard layla talk about green space and its um benefits to mental health there's a strong emerging area of research showing that these spaces also facilitate social interaction and a sense of belonging but also foster altruism and increased trust in the neighborhood on to the fifth attribute in our framework which is the active city i'm sure an active city concept is one that many of you are familiar with it integrates physical activity into everyday urban life and enables mobility for all citizens but physical health is interrelated to mental social and cognitive well-being so we are leveraging the book for a whole health activity sorry whole health active living strategies this is the barcelona super block which includes that mixed-use community that i just talked about it's multi-modal in terms of its street design or what are called comfortable streets here in the u.s it has a strong street connectivity connectivity between residences shops and play facilities there is subsidized integrated public transit built into this block model street trees urban greening and play facilities the benefits of mental health from being mobile are less well evidenced than the physical benefits but they include a reduced risk of depression anxiety improved stress regulation improve brain health and memory functioning which play a significant role in healthy aging and in healthy child development the sixth attribute recalling the playable city the benefits to play for child well-being are really fairly well-known play fosters both physical social cognitive and emotional development in children but we argue in the book for an all-age approach to play play and our desire for curiosity wonder doesn't stop when we reach our teams and um across the lifespan play can help nurture our creativity our learning give us agency and aids social interaction across all ages so we distinguish in the book between two types of play context pure play context um which are designed primarily for child play playgrounds play streets but we also flag the importance of other playable contexts not necessarily designed for play but in which playful activities can take place interactive art exhibits for example opportunities for play appreciation in the form of parker and chicago this is an example of the bean many of you will know this you see yourself in reflection in the context of a city so you're seeing yourself in the context of a city in a more playful novel way which may um promote civic engagement with that city the final attribute the seventh attribute and arguably the most important attribute of any city is the inclusive city again i just stress these themes overlap so we interpret in the book inclusive design is designed for all ages all genders all races and ethnicities all sexual orientations all socioeconomic strata and for the full diversity of physical sensory and cognitive abilities and needs unfortunately we all know that urban design has contributed to segregation exclusion and prejudice in our cities which affects people's self-esteem their dignity independence and their mental health as well as their ability to access the full range of the city's educational economic social cultural and health opportunities the two ways in which we talk in the book about how cities can achieve more inclusivity is through attracting people to mixed income mixed-age neighborhoods just as this barcelona super block example we've just shown offering good quality housing to all ages all socioeconomic strata and a wide range of facilities i'd also just flag here the need to make those urban design decisions with the residents to build bottom-up co-creating and recognizing the needs and characteristics of all residents so finally i just wanted to touch on the theoretical framework of the book the title originates from a whole body of research that's built up over the last 50 to 60 years in restorative environment research and it's backed up by thousands of studies there are four psychological processes associated with a restorative environment and a restorative city the first is fascination which is also linked to our sense of wonder and curiosity it engages our attention but in a non-demanding involuntary type of way that opens up room for reflection compatibility it makes sense doesn't it that a city has to have a good fit with our individual needs a sense of being a way which captures a sense of escape from our everyday also related to the concept of extent when we look up out of the horizon up and out of our context to another world we get a sense of vastness or even this is meadowland i'm sure many of us can appreciate and recall times when we've um risen up say or mounted a hill in a city to look up and out of it to get a different sense of context we're often asked by urban designers and architects what simple strategies can they employ um to make a difference to mental health and um i'm just going to finish by saying if there were only two things in a neighborhood that you could do for mental health one recommendation would be to increase its curiosity and fascination whilst also increasing opportunities for being away at the same time providing opportunities for people to interact so that's our presentation complete finally just some information about how you may buy the book um you can obtain it from bloomsbury.com in the us with a discount um it's also available on amazon and it may even be in your local bookshop we hope um so that's us finished and so over to stephanie for questions thank you leila and jenny that was really wonderful it's um having read the book it's very clear that you are on the one hand very thorough and thoughtful with all of this enormous amount of information being brought to bear as evidence uh to give us a sense of direction of what works and what doesn't work and and then there's this other softer side which is the illustrations and the sense that you want people to love the places where they are and this is this is just a wonderful balance in that and i we want to thank you for that this book um and it will be just the thing to pull out from underneath the desk when a policy maker sitting behind a desk somewhere says oh but is that important and we can pull the book out from underneath the desk and say yes this is really really critical so can you go in a little bit further um telling us you know the pandemic has changed our world view of health um and our relationship to everyone across the world and it signals a kind of quiet revolution or is it going to be an avalanche it will be a slow start or a fast start um layla do you want to go first on that all right i think i can kick off i i think that the pandemic has been interesting in a couple of ways one as i mentioned before that it has really just made people a bit more aware of what their physical environments do to their health um you know they're having to to change how they interact with their physical environments whether it's being locked down in some sort of way so that they have been restricted to their own neighborhoods has stopped and made people think wait a minute what about my neighborhood makes me feel well what doesn't um for example here in the uk and so many people went to the parks in their neighborhoods that actually some of those parks had to be closed because people were concerned that social distancing couldn't be maintained in them it really made people think gosh i value having a high quality well-maintained accessible park in my neighborhood and but also i think that the pandemic showed what could be achieved so um pre-pandemic as as we all know there's a bit of a fight for for every inch of road that we might want to use for something that's not car related and what we found during the pandemic was that there was a sufficient demand for public space that was usable by pedestrians in various ways for socializing from moving around safely that we had pop-up parks we had temporary pedestrianization we had different ways of enabling safe active transport and all those sorts of things and by delivering those pop-up opportunities people started to realize that hey actually change is possible and we like it so i think that many of these things have really increased people's understanding and interest and demand for uh better public spaces and not just bang in the center of town but extending out to wherever they happen to live jenny i don't know if you want to add anything to that one so i think this needs to happen quite urgently um to address your question i've been in research now for 18 years evidencing the benefits of urban parks particularly we know there are equity issues we all know that there are people who really are in need of good quality outdoor spaces they may not have a garden at home they may not even have a balcony at home so this becomes for me a health equity issue and i think it is urgent and we know we know what makes a difference um you know we've done the research particularly in relation to urban green space i think some of the other themes in the book are much less well evidenced and we need more evidence but as a researcher i'm really wanting to now leave bridge this framework to to really argue with town planners um with public health officials that there there's a really sound strategy here that can make a difference i'm talking to people in urban planning and public health what they tell me is yes this approach really does make a lot of sense and some of the cities and areas you know are installing you know new urban green infrastructure um components for issues in relating to climate resiliency and climate adaptation but they're not thinking about the co-benefits to mental health so mental health isn't driving some of these initiatives it's a kind of side effect or bonus to some of those um interventions so i'd like to see mental health accelerated up the list of both um you know planners and public health um directors of cities can you give us some ideas about how the people listening in today and by the way i looked into the chat thank you everyone and if you haven't if you'd like to put down where you're from and what you do and if you want a question please put it in the q a not in the chat for me so that i can see them all in one place can you give us some um some guide posts or ideas about how we as planners urbanists uh transportation planners policy people managers can accelerate this change so just like start with that one line look um so that's what's out of our silos lots of ideas in the books i mean that their principles not algorithms and you know the first thing we'd say i think layla would agree is co-create you have to work with a community in which you want to um develop change and then i'd say assets mapping working with what you've got rather than starting with a clean slate often there are real gems in a neighborhood that an external person may not appreciate and understand so mapping those assets looking to see what you've got rather than taking a deficit um and then building from there and thinking of where you can connect those assets you know using say for instance street line trees for me um you know the key is really around connection it's about um building and increasing access to those gems in a neighborhood and if they're not connected by safe and walkable and accessible and inclusive routes then they won't get used i'll i'll come in from the policy perspective and i'll say that what enables uh a framework like this to be implemented is is demand is people who who want to see uh design that is going to have an impact on people's mental health and well-being uh that that's uh it's all very well for for a designer or a planner to want to implement these principles which are so clear and exciting um in terms of their potential impact but in order to get to get that project commission to get it signed off to get it paid for and those people have to be on board they have to see the value so i think that there's there's a certain amount of um case building to be done at all levels to make sure that people really understand a the value the the wide range of value of investing in um design and planning to improve mental health um and b that actually uh this isn't some kind of nebulous concept in fact there is a framework the research is there this is this is how you make progress in doing that and i think that by really instilling these cases at all levels um as to your point about the silos and to get the various people involved in them in commissioning developing designing building uh then that's how you're going to get the the progress um we're getting uh some good questions in now in the chat um in the q a sorry um can you give us some examples of places that provide fascination to the users i know you you talked a little bit about water jenny uh so fascination can be found in your everyday environment um typically um if you think of a tree has a fascination um built into it through its fractal patterns the fractal patterns of the leaves so it doesn't you know these restorative environments don't need to be huge um other examples of fascination is when we experience a mural um something multi-sensory that engages all our senses it's something that takes us up and out of our everyday environment our particularly our work environment um so right now i'm looking at a beautiful view of the blue ridge mountains from from my workstation i'm looking up and out of those mountains at regular points is both fascinating it gives me a sense of extent and of being away and it's um it's it's uh benefiting my my kind of attention depletion it's restoring my attention and it's really important to have access to views but also two small pockets say green spaces within a city for the benefit of attention restoration there's a lot of theory around that um so fashion fascination is everywhere um layla do you have any thoughts about that what kills what kills fascination too well what kills fascination i think is is boringness so for example uh if you think about walking along a block and one one street that you walk by may have all sorts of mixed use um stores and residences and offices and they might be quite small they might be quite permeable so you know you might be able to see inside see what's going on they might have say it's a grocer's they might have their um their fruit and vegetables outside uh people might be standing around chatting and there's activity going on so you're really engaged by that sort of that sort of an environment and the research tells us that when you're walking past that environment you tend to walk a little bit slower you're paying a little bit of attention you're interested in what's going on and compare that to walking along one of those streets that um the entire block is taken up by something really monotonous like you know a big featureless wall um that you know might be the side of a supermarket or an office block or whatever it may be and there's not much going on there at all we know that people are likely to sort of hurry past those things we also know that um having an environment like that your brain because it's not being fascinated is actually more likely to turn to these negative ruminations that have been associated with depression so yeah i think that's an example of just um how fascination can affect you as you walk along a city block and and certainly there's the potential for a lot of sensory overload in those that you've just described walking along a main street or downtown and so how does green space provide something that's entirely different in terms of fascination or relaxation etc i feel that that's fact attention restoration theory and i might pass back to jenny who's more expert in that i don't think it does necessarily need to be green space that's just where all the research has been done i mean people have looked at cafes as being restorative environments as you know monasteries built hard built environments without green space can be as equally restorative and if you don't have the money to maintain and install green space then you know communities can look to other simple interventions interactive art exhibits public art murals color lighting there's a whole host of um other you know cues and materials in the environment that can promote fascination not just green space it's just that's where all the research has been done i think i think that there's something about um attention without concentration there's a lot in the built environment that is trying to make you do something or think something or act in some kind of certain way so you're having to see sensory input and interpret it and you know that that's that's a bit of work that your brain is doing but when i guess that when we're talking about fascination what we're talking about is interesting things that are coming at our senses that we don't have to we don't have to interpret it we can experience it and we can and think about it and we can do with it as we will and uh yeah the research tells us that that can be really beneficial um another question here in the q a many high-profile culture parks typically get built in more prestigious and wealthy areas of communities how do we provide equitable access across our across our communities um and that include everyone that's a question for the ages isn't this but i think at the end of the day it's about commitment to equity isn't it it's about it's about a city-wide strategy that makes sure that everyone is able to benefit from the mental and physical health benefits it's a cost-saving benefit i mean if you think so i have to say the cost-benefit analysis of say putting pocket parks in deprived urban communities is not very well advanced the methodology isn't very well advanced there are a few studies but i think documenting the evidence both in terms of mental health gains but also the cost savings that those gains bring in terms of let's say antidepressant depressant prescriptions um you know we need we need both types of evidence so but it is just fundamentally an equitable issue um and it just needs to happen um you know and we need to to ensure that those people who are suffering from the highest stress um in our communities benefit from access to facilities that we know can help alleviate not take away but can help provide some breathing space for those stresses financial stresses employment stresses um domestic stresses one of the things you point out in your book is not just that you we need these specific spots dotted around but that you get the most benefit by connecting and so lucilla is asking how to encourage improvements in our public spaces without necessarily depending on council's initiatives like pocket parks for example how to put together people interested in investing in public spaces when it may not be profitable as any other private development picture is an example a resident that wants to see a change in that local area camden council he knows how to design street furniture and has put together design design after informally consulting with neighbors and then residents cannot raise the money to implement so long question which are existing mechanisms for example in london to make these public spaces um pocket trans these public space transformations um happen more quickly right should i say that this is just one that jenny and i are both hoping each other might take go on jeremy i mean i think again it begins with asset building and working with what you've got there are so many public spaces in london that are not well cared for they're not kept so actually maintaining and keeping some of those spaces and making sure that the quality of those public spaces is just as good as hyde park or st james's park um so it does need funding all right but again if we look at the cost benefit mechanisms if we start to put a cost benefit to trees in terms of their reduction and the risk of depression in terms of parks in terms of the reduction of the risk of other mental health problems you know we have to persuade local authorities that there is a cost benefit to investing in these types of spaces now that can be done with research using health economists for example that requires the funders people like the um national institute of health in in the uk the nihr um investing in that type of research so i also think there's real merit in um i've seen it in london i lived in london for 20 years in town hamlets and i've seen gorilla gardening work really effectively people take over a community take over a community a sort of wasteland it happened in my own neighborhood in beau and um they they asked the council for access to create community gardens now that needs some facilitation that needs some organization there are organizations in london groundwork trust is one that have helped leverage and helped communities build those types of community gardens um we've gone into a london orientated conversation now uh but i'll i'll lift us from the london to the japan um because this makes me think of one of the examples that we we have in the book which is matchy zuccoori from um from japan particularly i used to live in tokyo and i was really interested in this as a concept where essentially there was a custom where local people from a neighborhood would would work with urban designers on a sort of longer term basis to identify what sort of small changes would benefit that community in that neighborhood and then there was some investment from from the government but also uh or the local government and and some investment from the urban designers and some investment from the people within the neighborhood to actually make those changes and then uh take responsibility for maintaining them as well it's a really interesting model which might also be relevant here from json green integration and street continuity definitions needs to be in balance clearly what are your thoughts of streets as places in their own right and how to seek balance with larger green integration obviously with the concern of avoiding a superblock strategy strategy similar to public housing in new york where the street is eliminated for the sake of now dangerous and under utilized semi-public green space um i hope to have a go at that question um because i'm writing actually about streets and well-being with a transportation planner andrew moonshine in my school and we're using the framework of the book and some of the ideas in the book to talk about the idea of restorative streets so the street as jane jacobs defined it is is a place where we can um you know be uh interacting with our neighbors the street has assumed and taken on a great deal more significance underclovered because it's where we had acted out a large part of our lives so at least in a european context the street became the place where you saw your neighbor it's where you've got your local groceries is where you queue to get a coffee um and it's where you maybe took your exercise and cycles and walks so the street i think has become even more important um during cover during the covet era um and it's where sort of i mean jane jacobs talks about the intricate ballet of life it's where the vitality um and energy of the neighborhood takes place and takes things um so so so so important but i would add street trees are super important too and there is a really strong relationship between street trees and mental health and so streets um you know specifically with urban greening and with traffic calming with reduced noise levels to reduced air pollution have a huge role to play in this kind of connecting system that we talk about in the book if we do a flyover in any particular neighborhood it's easy to see where the expensive houses are you just look at the green mass usually so often people in other neighborhoods lower income fight street trees because of the care the cost the leaves the droppings etc and and there's not a real culture net and there isn't in all neighborhoods a culture of wanting to have street trees how do we overcome this uh and and that's true too also of business districts i would say that one thing is doing the proper research to install the right type of trees for the neighborhood and there's lots of research that's been done i've been to quite a few events where people have been speaking at length about how there's many cities where people will stick in trees that as you say will have these disadvantages that don't work well for the neighborhoods in which they've been installed so i'll start i'll start off jenny and then you can take over but i would say that um that there's this real opportunity to properly plan the type of tree as to where it's going as to whether it's going to fit with the community and the uh facilities and desires and needs of that community which is not properly always taken into account yeah top down dropping in of these trees just doesn't work in many communities so it's a couple of really interesting um proposals of foot in philadelphia and chicago so chicago's got a plan to plant 75 000 trees and philly is already doing that um and i think philly has appointed community ambassadors to work at the community level um to understand some of the barriers that might be facing um people having trees you know in their backyard and trying to flag and raise some of the you know the benefits and values that trees bring not just to health but to biodiversity so i think compute you know having community ambassadors in a community who are working with um the planning department with the urban design team is a really good model that's great um from patrick can you address um two commercial business owners why they should care about the seven pillars especially in the downtown urban district um they'll kick off on this one just to say that um if you're going to um have a restorative street say you're going to bring more people onto it they're going to stop dwell spend more time on it interact with people in it and they're going to spend more time looking at your shop windows looking at your restaurant menus possibly sitting down on a on the street to enjoy an open air meal or coffee so increasing footfall is uh has a retail benefits and all of the things we're proposing are things that will increase the footfall on people's um downtown and local streets and i guess that i will add if i'm not sure that it's an immediate argument but looking at the bigger picture and supporting and promoting the mental health of a community is promoting its productivity and you know technically it's spending power so these things are all linked and an investment in people's mental health is an investment in in your future customers um so how does uh sacred spaces sanctuary um change social health and well-being and how does faith play in in your book from an anonymous asker so should i take that um i think embedding both social and spiritual benefits within the restorative environment framework is really really important and spiritual means so many different things to so many different people so it's hard to give a kind of answer from my perspective um increasing the connection to the natural world is one way to go by increasing the sense of sacred and spiritual space we know for instance that just the experience of what i call every day or the textures of a leaf or the patterns of water as it runs over different surface textures is a kind of micro or experience and these experiences do take us up and out of ourselves we know that from the research that all experiences a sense of vastness that sense of extent i talked about earlier also takes us up and out of our world into um a different state in which we can connect with another world with other people possibly um so i'm just speaking very personally from my own um understanding or how i connect spiritually to space um layla do you have other thoughts i mean i think that that the other side of it is that um lots of those spaces that that are developed for you know to host various buildings um for various sorts of spiritual needs uh they have within them the opportunity for people to sit sit in their courtyards and be more contemplative a bit of a bit of respite from what might other be quite otherwise be quite a dense um and sensory input experience so there's a lot of contemplative opportunity there's also opportunity um for what we call bumping places so the opportunity for people who um frequent those places to actually see uh see their neighbors and um you know even just nodding to people that you recognize can have can have restorative benefits for your mental well-being uh so there's this opportunity to feel that you're part of a community there's the opportunity to to take to take that opportunity for um quiet contemplation uh within the otherwise bustling city and there's the opportunity to put on events that will bring in um and enable the neighborhood to socialize within the context of those spiritual spaces uh i think that you know there are really interesting um thing for any city to be able to be able to take advantage of in all sorts of different ways um i i think a lot of us are not familiar with um this idea by um is it linda blau from consequential strangers the idea that your happiness is directly related to the number of people who you kind of casually bump into c way that you may not know their name you may not socialize with them in any other setting but it's kind of directly related so creating spaces where more of this as you call it bumping i love that term bump into each other um are these bumping spaces more likely to happen in um neighborhood settings in downtown settings where where are they more likely to happen i think they can happen in all sorts of settings but they're more likely in places where people are walking rather than in cars if people are traveling um you know from the library to the butcher shop or whatever by car you're much less likely to take advantage of the bumping places that that could occur um but they can be anywhere they can be at the school gates they can be in a park they can be at a marketplace and they can be at the dog park um certainly if you're thinking about it in the neighborhood scale um it makes it more likely that you will encounter people who you've seen before but also within the book we explore bumping places for you know different cultural amenities like if if you um seek a particular marketplace that might that might sell food from a country that you have an affiliation to you might run into other people from that country and you know that's a community there's all sorts of different communities that can be created just through through the opportunity of of encountering each other repeatedly and having having the opportunity to just nod as you as you recognize each other and walk past of course that can that can be developed into uh you know meeting people and knowing people and having having a wider social interaction as well um do you have any favorite places or cities i i i never like to say that i have any favorite cities um i mean personally speaking washington has a special place in my heart and i'm just sucking up to um to you guys now because i i realize that um that that's where you're based but um i i always i always loved certain parts of washington in terms of the green space in terms of the opportunities to um get such great input in terms of cultural things in terms of um meeting other people in terms of it feeling uh not so much of a big city that you that you were able to you're able to bump into people but you know there's another flip side to that there's this huge amount of inequality in in washington dc which meant that some people were very much more able to take advantage of of those benefits than others and i think that that's the sort of thing that really needs to be worked through if we're going to make a good city into a great city what about you jenny so it won't come as any surprise to either of you i don't think but my favorite city is edinburgh yes where i spend four months of my year and it has all of these properties in terms of fascination in terms of a sense of extent it's got seven hills you can look up out of these seven hills get that sense of vastness um it has compatibility with my needs it's where my family are um and what's the other fourth attributes being away wonderful places to escape to swim to walk with extraordinary nature running through the city and beyond the city so i think there are many cities that meet that particular um brief but i think an important part of a favorite place is you have some other psychological connection to it and for me that's family and the social um yeah well said both of you two of my favorite cities um for sure rob well uh we're getting close to we got about one minute left i don't know if there's another question that you have stephanie for or thoughts that if the ladies would like to jump in um you know where do you see this research this planning going where are people focusing um their study what do we have to look forward to what evidence i think that we have to look forward to far more interest and focus on this whole area of urban design and planning for mental health and it's an area that has been pretty neglected if you compare it to physical health but now people are starting to really see that this is an opportunity and i think that that in general what we're looking forward to is a bit of an explosion of the research as more people are interested in it where people are funding it more people are doing this research and more people are publishing it i mean only a few years ago um i set up the journal of urban design and mental health because people told me they couldn't get their research published because this felt like a niche area i think that over the past few years what we're seeing is that it's no longer a niche area this is something that people are really thinking about within the context of the healthy city and what that means so what i'm looking forward to seeing we heard that there's lots and lots of evidence around um green space in particular we're waiting to see more and more and more evidence that really um validate all the different ways that urban design can be used to um to advanced mental health and well-being um stephanie there's one important question in the chat bar which is about do we need epoch developers planners conceptual creators to bring well-being and belonging to communities absolutely 120 percent do we need that and this research has not really been carried out very effectively in nurse communities so as well as urban designers um and people of color building from the bottom up with their communities we do need more research and we also need more research in the undeveloped world in africa in asia um but we're very limited to some extent in in that what we know is being has come from the western world maybe you can explain a little bit what a be a bipark is um it's black indigenous people of color um it's my understanding of what pop is and we certainly do need more of those people engaged at the community level but also in our urban planning systems um in our real estate systems um and i do we do work here in charlottesville with one such person who facilitates those types of conversations if that person wants to approach me i can pass those details on wonderful i wanted to thank everybody um i thank the the authors leila and jenny and stephanie the interviewer and um all of the attendees uh and the book is restorative cities um we're going to be publishing this or we're going to be posting this video on our website uh within about a day or so so you can go back to it uh but um this has been a fascinating discussion and i wanted um it's it's just been very interesting for me to listen to uh so uh with that i'm going to let everybody go and have a good day thank you everybody and thanks dhiru and rob thank you everybody bye bye bye