Let’s not forget the role of environmental psychology in our quest for healthier cities

Abstract

Every day, around the world, city dwellers experience the enticements, innovations, and complexities native to the urban form. Cities naturally afford a sense of vibrancy, social connection, cultural immersion, and community. They also serve as places for augmenting relationships and affiliations, accessing resources and technology, as well as economic gain. But, for many, cities are also rife with hardship and uncertainty, social injustice, and unsustainable systems – systems that benefit some while entrenching inequity for others. Arguably, governments, organizations, and individuals alike have needed to prioritize transdisciplinary knowledge about people-place relations for decades as they work to predict and improve resilience and public health. Urgent human and planetary health demands in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and in the midst of climate change, exist. This means that developing strategies for urban planners and practitioners to use as they facilitate change quickly is prudent. In response, our primary aim for this special issue of Cities & Health titled ‘Planning for People and Health: Environmental Psychology in the City’ is to communicate interdisciplinary research and commentary at the intersection of urban planning, social science, and public health. Creating (and then maintaining) opportunities for city inhabitants to foster their quality of life and wellbeing, while learning from different cultures and contexts, requires researchers, planners, and decisionmakers to have a clearer understanding of human psychological processes in relation to the built and natural settings that surround them. As a professional environmental psychologist, and a research practitioner specializing in place-based community wellbeing and health innovation, co-guest editing this special issue fulfilled our joint aspiration to bring together academic and field work that references theories found in environmental psychology – a discipline centred on studying transactions between people and place (Gifford 2014). Our overarching objective was to publish existing (and stimulate new) investigations about urban psychology, health, and sustainable behaviours from around the globe. The special issue succeeds in showcasing empirical, conceptual, and methodological contributions written for a broad audience. And, as with all issues of Cities & Health, many papers are accompanied by a ‘City Know How’ submission that allows authors to summarize the applied aspects of their work in a format that practitioners, planners, and academics can use quickly and easily, ‘on the ground’. The various types of papers, book reviews, and city shorts reveal an evolving evidence base that can be used to address a variety of challenges related to urban life. Generally, the contributions in this special issue employ mixed-methods research approaches to study how the quality of urban infrastructure can affect human wellbeing (e.g. studying apartment building defects in relation to mental health, Foster et al. 2022). The association between affect and exposure to high-rise buildings is also examined (Mazumder et al. 2020), as is the therapeutic value of blue space on psychological outcomes for urban residents (Satariano 2021). Research on nature place-making in the city, and some of the strategies that can improve evaluations of social connection and community wellbeing is also included (Sones et al. 2021, Benjumea et al. 2022, Lach et al. 2022). The extent to which the built environment can contribute to loneliness in cities (Jamalishahni et al. In press), how open outdoor areas positively relate to health (Ajayi and Amole 2022), and the impacts of urban walking on psychophysical wellbeing during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic are other topics explored in the special issue (Neale et al. 2022). Taken together, these works express the nuanced and complex nature of city settings, along with ideas about how preventative, healthfocused planning methods can be implemented so that the principles of environmental psychology can play a role in bolstering residents’ quality of life. Common themes among some of the papers in the issue is the value of social cohesion and forging a connection with nature for positive city living, and the effectiveness of environmental interventions on specific social determinants of health. Cultivating wellbeing and place-making are presented as mechanisms for fostering pro-environmental behaviour and