What are your research interests, Greg?

I work in the nexus of biology and psychology, studying the impacts of nature experience on human cognitive function, mood, and emotion regulation.
 
You've just published a research study that looks at the links between nature and mental health. What got you interested in this subject?

My interest in this area comes from a desire to investigate the value that natural landscapes may provide for people with respect to mental health.  Following in the footsteps of the compelling work before me in environmental psychology, I set out to determine whether I would obtain empirical evidence for the impact of nature experience on cognitive function, mood, and emotion regulation, using the tools of psychology.   I also want to explore ways of incorporating this evidence into urban design and decision making.

Briefly, can you describe what your study involved?

38 people came into the lab and filled out a questionnaire on their current levels of rumination (repetitive thought focused on negative aspects of the self). They also underwent a brain scan. They were randomly assigned to a 90-min walk in either a natural setting (a park near Stanford) or an urban setting (beside a busy street in Palo Alto).  Upon completion of the walk, participants filled out the rumination questionnaire again, and underwent a second, follow-up scan.  We analyzed whether there was a differential change in nature vs. urban walkers in both self-reported rumination (the questionnaire) and in a part of the brain that has been shown to be active during rumination (the subgenual prefrontal cortex). 

What did your study find?

Participants who went on a 90-min walk through a natural environment reported lower levels of rumination and showed reduced neural activity in an area of the brain linked to risk for mental illness compared with those who walked through an urban environment.

How do you believe that exposure to nature achieves this impact on people's mental health?

This is an active area of exploration for us — and we hope to publish some findings on this soon.

Given that your study involved healthy participants, do you think the nature exposure is more likely to help prevent depression, or could it also be helpful for people who are already depressed?

We do not know the answer to how nature experience will impact rumination in depressed individuals, as our study focused on healthy participants.

What are the practical implications of your study's findings for urban planners, designers and developers?

More work needs to be done in this arena, but our work, along with the work of others, is helping to contribute to an overall body of evidence that nature experience provides benefits to human cognitive function and mood.  This knowledge can inform the ways in which urban planners incorporate nature into cities, and provide accessible natural landscapes for urban and suburban residents.  It can also provide support for conservation of open space and wilderness areas in policy design.

What's next for you in your research? (And what would you like to see other researchers address on this topic?)

We are exploring our hypothesis that emotion regulation shifts are a possible causal mechanism for the cognitive function and mood benefits that we have observed to be resultant from nature vs. urban experience.  I hope that other researchers continue to explore both the characteristics of the impacts of nature experience, possible causal mechanisms, and how these impacts may or may not be moderated by individual differences.

For people who want to learn more about the links between nature, urban design, and impact on mental health, what other research studies or other resources do you recommend they might like to read?

There is more to list here than room allows, but I would start with a great textbook which was recently published entitled Environmental Psychology by Linda Steg (Editor), Agnes E. van den Berg (Editor), Judith I. M. de Groot (Editor)— it includes a great overview of theory and some of the classic studies in this area.

Learn more about Greg Bratman's study:

Read the original research paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

Read about the research in the New York Times. 

Watch Greg talk about his research in this video:


Where are you originally from, and where do you now live and work?

I grew up outside of Austin, Texas, and moved to DC for graduate school; I have been here since – I live in the city and work in the city and walk to and from.

Which is your favorite city in the world, and why?

I really haven’t travelled enough; but of my travels, I most frequently find myself in my Aunt’s small town of Ipswich, Massachusetts, north of Boston. We visit the neighbors, pick vegetables straight from her garden and sip tea on the sun porch; it is always a pleasurable break from a downtown life.

What sort of work do you do around the intersection of urban design and mental health?

I have a Master’s Degree in Interior Design where I focus on infusing the built environment with health using research and principles of Evidence-Based Design. My focus area is the healthcare environment, both physical healthcare and mental healthcare. I have recently begun to engage with our Urban Planning group to take the elements we use on the interior scale, and expand those to the building and city scale.

How did you end up working at this intersection?

One of my first projects out of school was an adolescent behavioral health residential facility. And it was built like a jail. We take oaths as designers to protect the “health, safety and welfare of the public”. And to me that meant I had an obligation to protect everyone who needed safe and healthy spaces – especially those most vulnerable and in need of healing.

What particularly interests you about the link between urban design and mental health?

Simply the fact that designing our cities to support mental health is missing – and there is so much potential and so much need. Mental healthcare in general is still not at the preventative stage that physical healthcare is moving towards. Designing surroundings that help foster positive mental health for the millions who living in and moving to cities could create a positive mental revolution.

Can you describe an example of good urban design that positively impacts mental health?

Choice and control in the urban environment has the most potential in my mind. Individuals move to urban centers for opportunity. And that should not be restricted to job opportunity. City dwellers should have options of how to get to and from places, safe and healthy opportunities of commuting. Giving the person a right to choose their path creates a great foundation for positive mental health because it provides control; when individuals feel as though they have no control over their situation – big or small - their mental state deteriorates.

What sort of challenges do you see in urban design for mental health?

The challenge will be breaking the stigmas of talking about mental health issues; regardless that a quarter of our adult population suffers from poor mental health. I believe many urban planners are already on the verge of creating healthier cities, through physically active cities; mixed use cities; sustainable cities; but we need to embrace open conversation on what those achievements in urban planning can do for a citizen’s mental health and explore further opportunities.

Why do you think people don't focus enough on the link between urban design and mental health?

Because mental health is “easier” to discuss when it can be isolated to an individual (i.e. “well, he was crazy”) and not at a larger, societal scale. Violent tragedies go back to gun laws and race issues and not so much how we are shaping our citizens, mentally.

What would you like to see the Centre for Urban Design and Mental Health achieve?

Draw attention to the issues; bring people together to find solutions. Talk, talk, talk!

Where are you originally from, and where do you now live and work?

I was born in Washington, D.C., raised in its suburbs, and currently live in the Bloomingdale Neighborhood near U Street in the District. I just finished 23 years with Arlington Department of Transportation and am embarking upon private practice in my new hometown of Key West.


Which is your favorite city in the world, and why?

I love traveling and my favorite cities include Heidelberg, Vienna, Montreal, San Francisco, Seattle, the District and Key West. I’m moving to Key West in the fall because it’s compact, vibrant and historical. It’s very walkable and bikeable. And you can eat and play outside twelve months a year. We don’t own a car in D.C. and won’t in Key West.

What sort of work do you do around the intersection of urban design and mental health?

I help cities make it easy to use active transport options like bike, walk and transit instead of driving. This makes individuals, companies and places more green, healthy, prosperous and happy.

How did you end up working at this intersection?

In looking for hooks to change people’s behavior from driving cars to instead using transit, biking and walking for commutes and everyday trips, research tells us that people who use these options to car driving are healthier and happier and less stressed. So we use these facts (among others) to market these options.


What particularly interests you about the link between urban design and mental health?

The world is becoming more urban. As the population expands in the coming decades, this will only become more so. We can’t repeat the mistakes of our most recent past where here in North America we built dispersed, environmentally and economically unsustainable, un-healthy car-dependant places. We can reverse this trend. And change is starting to occur in some progressive cities. Recent work and research points out that our physical environment can influence our mental and physical health. City governments have a huge influence over that built environment. Cities control the development approval process and so can influence what and where the private sector builds. And cities control a quarter to a half of our land, depending upon how you measure it, when you account for streets, parks and rights of way. As the emerging mental health research gets better, there’s an amazing opportunity to use this data to help us retrofit and build healthier places.


Can you describe an example of good urban design that positively impacts mental health?

Streets that are built for people. That means streets that prioritize people who walk, bike and use transit rather than cars. It looks like wide sidewalks and protected bike lanes. It means prioritizing public space for plazas, small to large, where we can eat, shop and congregate. These streets are less stressful and more healthy and happy places than car-centric streets. My favorite examples here in the District, because I use them a lot, include the 14th Street Corridor and 17th Street in Dupont Circle.

What sort of challenges do you see in urban design for mental health?

Changing the status quo can be difficult. Especially if that change is seen as taking something away from people who are use to the way life use to be. So every time we prioritize people and take away on-street parking or take away a traffic lane to replace it with a parklet or plaza or for walk-bike-transit space, someone will cry foul. The biggest challenge is the political will to make these changes.

Why do you think people don't focus enough on the link between urban design and mental health?

I don’t think people focus on it because it’s an emerging science. It has only been recently that planners have realized the connection between the built environment and physical health.

What would you like to see the Centre for Urban Design and Mental Health achieve?

That’s why it’s so exciting to see the Center for Urban Design and Mental Health come onto the scene. This new think tank can contribute to making the places we live better by getting us to consider more than the bottom line. In the end, we’ll all be healthier.

Follow Chris on Twitter @chrisrhamilton

Welcome to our Monday Meeting series, where we interview people working in, and thinking about the links between urban design and mental health. Today, meet Sandro Galea. 

How did you become involved in working in urban mental health?

I have been interested in how cities influence health throughout my academic career, motivated by a recognition that the urban environment was rapidly becoming the most ubiquitous context shared by many of us. Cities shape how we think, feel, and behave, the water we drink, food we eat, air we breathe. It has long seemed to me that cities represent the classic driver of population conditions (including health), which, if understood, can result in the improvement of human health.

What are some of the more interesting pieces of work you have done on urban mental health?

We have long investigated how the urban environment influences common mood-anxiety disorders, showing for example that quality of the built environment is associated with greater incident depression, independent of individual-level factors. Other work has focused on urban social networks, violence, and mental health for example.

Why is making the link between mental health and urban design important?

Designing urban environments to maximize the potential for healthier populations presents an extraordinary opportunity to improve the health of millions who live in cities worldwide.

What's one of your favorite examples of urban design efforts to improve mental health?

I quite like the illustrations provided by Jan Semenza in my book Macrosocial Determinants of Population Health (Chapter 23) about the Sunnyside Piazza project in Oregon.
 
Where do you see the main opportunities in leveraging urban design to improve mental health?

I think a clear understanding of the elements of urban design that influence health, paired with intervention efforts can be key

What are you currently working on with the World Health Organization?

Our group is leading an analysis of the World Mental Health surveys, working with collaborators worldwide, on understanding how cities and mental health are linked. Data from this project should be emerging shortly.

Do you have a message for those who work in urban design?

I think the link between urban environments and health is promising and could, if well understood, result in improvements in population health that is matched by little else.

Layla McCay, UDMH Director
I took the photograph at the top of this blog while visiting Medellin, Colombia, and forgot about it until I was thinking about photographs for this website. It seems an apt basis for the first post on the UDMH blog. Medellin is a fascinating place. Named the world's most innovative city, they have shifted from a setting of danger and fear to an urban environment to be proud of. On the day I took this photograph, I visited one of the city's poorest areas to experience their game-changing public transport innovations, and admire their beautiful library. I was enchanted by the 385-metre long escalator and the 2km-long cable car, both linking this previously isolated area with the rest of the city (and in the other direction, providing easy, affordable access to a beautiful mountain park). Strolling through the streets en route to the library, I noted the numerous community spaces and the beautiful use of murals. I particularly loved the mural of a bus as it combines my delight at street art and my appreciation of public transport.

To start off our blog, here's my op-ed from the Huffington Post that was inspired by that trip, musing upon the future of reading and the library as a third space: Why We Should Let Go of Nostalgia and Embrace the Evolution of Libraries.