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A new study published in Cities and Health looked at associations between real-time, self-reported adolescent mental health and urban and architectural design concepts.

“First, we designed a walking route (1.7km) with seven stops, and quantified the actual spaces according to a number of features of pedestrian and transit oriented design,” study author Leia Minaker told us. “Next, we took 70 kids between nine and 17 years old on a walk, and had them fill out these surveys at each stop.”

The research team asked them to look around and be mindful of their surroundings (smells, sights, sounds, feelings) for two to three minutes. Then they completed a series of validated questionnaires about their positive and negative affect, feelings of anxiousness and calmness, and perceived restorativeness and mental demand. The research team wanted to see how different urban designs impact different emotional responses of kids, since emotional Reponses are important parts of mental health.

“It seems pretty obvious that greenspace and nature is good for kids,” Minaker told us. “But sometimes for action to happen, you need to spend time quantifying things that seem obvious so you can decide how much of a priority this things should have in public spending decisions or policy.”

Two areas motivated this study according to the research team, the first being that the world is urbanizing faster than ever before. The second is that youth mental health is not great – globally, about 25% of kids struggle with depression and about 21% struggle with anxiety, and these estimates have substantially increased from pre-pandemic to post-pandemic. Mental health care is expensive and unavailable for a lot of kids who struggle.

“So what we’re really interested in is, how do the way we build and design our cities impact kids’ mental health?” Minaker told us. “After adjusting for several factors like age, gender, ethnicity, mental health diagnosis, and social status, we found that when kids stood and looked at an urban lake for just two or three minutes, their anxiousness scores decreased by nine per cent.”

On the other hand, their anxiousness scores were 13 per cent higher when standing in a busy downtown location for the same length of time. They had 19% higher positive affect (emotions like cheerfulness, pride, enthusiasm, energy, and joy) when looking at the urban lake and 19% lower positive affect when looking at a highly concrete transit station.
The results didn’t surprise the researchers.

“They shouldn’t be surprising for anyone who has or knows any kids,” Minaker told us. “This was the first study to quantify the impact, though, which is why it’s important. Going forward, I think we need to consider what’s the bang for our buck if we decide to invest in cities that promote mental health rather than try to treat people’s poor mental health in the long run? Mental health care is expensive and not accessible for everyone, so how much could we prevent mental health problems in the first place by designing cities in health-promoting ways to begin with? This is an important question, especially since kids are most often excluded from city-building decisions.”