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Journal of Urban Design and Mental Health 2017;3:1
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EDITORIAL
New perspectives in urban design for mental health
Layla McCay
Centre for Urban Design and Mental Health
Centre for Urban Design and Mental Health
The field of urban design for the promotion of mental health is expanding rapidly at the moment. Knowledge is being transformed into guidelines and policies all over the world, and the opportunities are inspiring. As researchers and practitioners look forward to see what is possible next, the Third Edition of the Journal of Urban Design and Mental Health encourages us all to also look around. All over the world, different cities, sectors, and disciplines are grasping this challenge in very different ways, and the lessons we can learn inspire further innovation.
In this edition, we shine a spotlight on Tokyo, Japan. This massive city (or more accurately, prefecture) embodies many of the urban challenges shared by cities around the world. I have been based in Tokyo for the past year, learning about Tokyo's experiences and approaches, interviewing architects, planners and others, and the result is the first UD/MH city case study. With case studies from Wroclaw, Poland to Montreal, Canada in the works, we invite you to take a look at the methodology and submit a proposal to undertake a case study so we can learn from your city too. The Tokyo case study is complemented by a look at how Japan is leveraging urban planning to improve long term care for people with dementia, and an architectural case study of how a bookish Tokyo neighbourhood has achieved intimacy within density.
With the recent International Conference on Transport and Health came the opportunity to harness insights from the transportation sector for better mental health. As we anticipate the rise of autonomous vehicles, David Rojas-Rueda from IS Global in Barcelona predicts the potential impacts on mental health in a fascinating editorial. In the meantime, we developed the first scoping assessment of opportunity for transport to add value and deliver impact for public mental health, which should be of much interest to researchers and innovators in the transport sector. With the march of automobiles and declining socialisation of urban places, new research from Tehran, Iran uses a new approach to capturing this change, and propose strategies to address it in Shemiranat.
As interest grows at the nexus of urban design and mental health, different sectors are developing new tools by which to deliver the opportunities. This Edition contains research to demonstrate the Mome@School as a tool for capturing children's experiences of their environments, how to better understand the spatial needs of people with mental health disorders in shared spaces, and the Happy Homes toolkit for Multi-family housing to help improve residents' social wellbeing and sociability towards better mental health. Meanwhile another study examines the benefits of involving residents in planning and building healthy communities for mental health and Los Angeles is considered from the perspective of a regenerative city.
Finally, looking beyond traditional design sectors, we present a new and intriguing perspective on addressing urban violence: Alan Waxman and Carl Belizaire from New York City explain how to achieve emotional atmospheric manipulation to reduce community violence by 'coding' the urban experience through the medium of dance.
Please enjoy Edition 3 and submit to Edition 4 by 30 November 2017.
In this edition, we shine a spotlight on Tokyo, Japan. This massive city (or more accurately, prefecture) embodies many of the urban challenges shared by cities around the world. I have been based in Tokyo for the past year, learning about Tokyo's experiences and approaches, interviewing architects, planners and others, and the result is the first UD/MH city case study. With case studies from Wroclaw, Poland to Montreal, Canada in the works, we invite you to take a look at the methodology and submit a proposal to undertake a case study so we can learn from your city too. The Tokyo case study is complemented by a look at how Japan is leveraging urban planning to improve long term care for people with dementia, and an architectural case study of how a bookish Tokyo neighbourhood has achieved intimacy within density.
With the recent International Conference on Transport and Health came the opportunity to harness insights from the transportation sector for better mental health. As we anticipate the rise of autonomous vehicles, David Rojas-Rueda from IS Global in Barcelona predicts the potential impacts on mental health in a fascinating editorial. In the meantime, we developed the first scoping assessment of opportunity for transport to add value and deliver impact for public mental health, which should be of much interest to researchers and innovators in the transport sector. With the march of automobiles and declining socialisation of urban places, new research from Tehran, Iran uses a new approach to capturing this change, and propose strategies to address it in Shemiranat.
As interest grows at the nexus of urban design and mental health, different sectors are developing new tools by which to deliver the opportunities. This Edition contains research to demonstrate the Mome@School as a tool for capturing children's experiences of their environments, how to better understand the spatial needs of people with mental health disorders in shared spaces, and the Happy Homes toolkit for Multi-family housing to help improve residents' social wellbeing and sociability towards better mental health. Meanwhile another study examines the benefits of involving residents in planning and building healthy communities for mental health and Los Angeles is considered from the perspective of a regenerative city.
Finally, looking beyond traditional design sectors, we present a new and intriguing perspective on addressing urban violence: Alan Waxman and Carl Belizaire from New York City explain how to achieve emotional atmospheric manipulation to reduce community violence by 'coding' the urban experience through the medium of dance.
Please enjoy Edition 3 and submit to Edition 4 by 30 November 2017.
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About the Author
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Layla McCay is Director of the Centre for Urban Design and Mental Health and Managing Editor of the Journal of Urban Design and Mental Health. A psychiatrist, international public health and health systems specialist, and adjunct professor of international health at Georgetown University, she set up UD/MH in 2015 to help increase interest, knowledge sharing and translational research to improve population mental health through smart urban design. Trained at the Maudsley Hospital and Institute of Psychiatry in London, Layla has a keen interest in the determinants of mental health, and a passion for the built environment and helping people love the places they live.
@LaylaMcCay and @urbandesignmh |