An urban design and mental health reading list

For #WorldBookDay we asked our UD/MH fellows and other Twitter followers which books they would recommend that are relevant to the nexus of urban design and mental health. Behold: your UD/MH reading list. We hope you find some of these enjoyable.

I’ll start, shall I? The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs is of course a classic. Focuses the mind on planning that facilitates communities and social interaction.

— UrbanDesignMH (@urbandesignmh) March 1, 2018

A more recent recommendation is @thehappycity by Charles Montgomery. Though primarily about ‘happiness’, his book has energised a lot of people about how city design can contribute to mental wellbeing.

— UrbanDesignMH (@urbandesignmh) March 1, 2018

Recommendations by UD/MH Fellows

#worldbookday My top recommendation is currently Welcome to your World: How the Built Environment Shapes our Lives @SarahWGoldhagen

— Jenny Roe (@jennyjroe) March 1, 2018

I'll go with an essay (which was part of a book) An Architecture of the Seven Senses by Juhani Pallasmaa. Here's a link where you can read it. https://t.co/vtFMa8vkZ5

— Itai Palti (@ipalti) March 1, 2018

Over the Christmas break I read Edward T Hall's The Hidden Dimension and I think there was so much wisdom in that book, that I think we now can revisit with our modern technologies. https://t.co/NFXN99HbkQ

— Robin Mazumder (@RobinMazumder) March 1, 2018

On the value of community and human contact over monetary resources (social sustainability vs economic sustainability) there’s nothing better than George Eliot’s Silas Marner.

— Rhiannon Corcoran (@rhiannoncor) March 1, 2018

I recommend that everybody concerned with making and managing places reads Jared Diamond's "Collapse" https://t.co/agrUFrWuHo https://t.co/5r4zEzmr1r

— prosocial place (@prosocialplace) March 1, 2018

I also recommend Urban Alchemy: Restoring Joy in America's Sorted-Out Cities and Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, And What We Can Do About It, both by Mindy Fullilove @mindphul

— UrbanDesignMH (@urbandesignmh) March 2, 2018

Recommendations from UD/MH friends on Twitter

The Shaping of Us by Lily @spaceworksco

— ePSIch (@ePSIchology) March 1, 2018

Landscape and urban design for health and well-being: using healing, sensory and therapeutic gardens by me! (Gayle Souter-Brown) @RoutLandscape

— Greenstone Design (@Gayle_GSB) March 2, 2018

Healing Spaces, by Esther Sternberg @esthersternberg -- a fabulous book!

— Sarah W Goldhagen (@SarahWGoldhagen) March 2, 2018

"Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace" by Nikil Saval

Here's a review: https://t.co/gtlSv1HiVp

— Healing Places (@Healing_Pl) March 2, 2018

Just read the 2017 biography of Jane Jacobs. Useful to see how belittled she was as ‘just a mother’. Her insights are very relevant to the role of the built environment in helping to create viable and potentially supportive communities.

— Paul Lincoln (@PaulLincoln) March 1, 2018

Arrival City by @DougSaunders A book that argues that migration is normal and needs to be responded to intelligently by city planners and designers. City Life and Home by @witoldr both of which look at the significance of what we build and how we do it.

— Paul Lincoln (@PaulLincoln) March 1, 2018

Twenty Minutes in Manhattan is a great analysis of why living in the west village is so satisfying. And I want to write the London version.

— Paul Lincoln (@PaulLincoln) March 1, 2018

Bowling Alone by Robert Puttnam - not so much about urban design but a lot about the rituals and clubs that tie together communities and which aid the avoidance of isolation.

— Paul Lincoln (@PaulLincoln) March 1, 2018

Concretopia by @Grindrod an autobiographical take on post-war British building

— Paul Lincoln (@PaulLincoln) March 1, 2018

How about the opening of “IF NOBODY SPEAKS OF REMARKABLE THINGS” by Jon McGregor? Such a great description of sensory experience of an ordinary urban place: https://t.co/vn1ugCBPKT

— Steve Kemp (@SteveKempOP) March 1, 2018

EVERY book about urban design is relevant to mental health □

— Ben Hockman (@BAHockman) March 1, 2018