Restoration and the City: The Role of Public Urban Squares

Abstract

Over recent decades, the study of psychological restoration has attracted a considerable amount of interest within and without the boundaries of environmental psychology, with most of the work focused on analyzing restoration in natural contexts. However, little attention has been paid to the (possible) restorative potential of urban settings, as they have usually been expected not to be restorative and to present some elements that might imply negative health outcomes in the short and long term. In this field study, our aim was to evaluate restoration in urban squares. To this end, we measured participants' attentional and affective states both before and after spending half an hour in an urban square. A sample of 46 subjects contemplated and walked through one of the two selected squares that differed in restorative potential (PRS). Analyses revealed a statistically significant increase in cognitive performance and a decrease in negative affect in both squares. They also showed that participants reported greater stress recovery rates in one of the settings. These results support the idea that cities can be potentially restorative and justify the relevance of a research area focused on the urban designs, which may offer psychological benefits to urban citizens.

Going beyond Quietness: Determining the Emotionally Restorative Effect of Acoustic Environments in Urban Open Public Spaces

“…In agreement with other studies [6,10,11,14,19,20], the results reported here confirm the initial study hypothesis that some urban places exert a positive impact on people’s well–being and quality of life. Thus, the present study has demonstrated a positive effect that reflects the emotionally restorative capacity of the urban places analysed, whereby environmental experiences in these places yielded a statistically significant reduction in perceived stress and the negative emotions of sadness and anger, and a trend towards an increase in the positive emotions of happiness and calm.…”

“…There is thus a need to extend research on restorative environments to urban settings in order to determine whether these may also be considered restorative, as some recent studies would seem to suggest [18]. The results of one recent study revealed that participants’ psychological state improved after spending half an hour in one of two selected urban squares [19,20]. Visitors to both squares showed better cognitive performance, reduced negative affect variables (tension-anxiety, anger-hostility, fatigue and stress) and reported an increase in happiness.…”

“…According to Kaplan and Kaplan’s [1] and Ulrich’s [2,3,4] theories, natural settings reduce stress and alleviate negative emotional states, but there are few references to their impact on positive emotional states. Hence, San Juan et al [19] have argued that urban design can also significantly contribute to improving people’s well-being and quality of life, reducing their stress and restoring their psychological state. Other studies on the soundscape have highlighted the benefits of sound environments for well-being, mainly focusing on natural [43] or human sounds [44].…”

The Restorative Value of the Urban Environment: A Systematic Review of the Existing Literature

“…San Juan et al 50 compared 2 open public squares, which were either high in natural elements and high in enclosure or low in natural elements and low in enclosure. They found that both squares decreased tension-anxiety, anger-hostility, fatigue, vigor, and stress, and increased happiness from pre- to posttest.…”

Restoration, well-being, and everyday physical activity in indoor, built outdoor and natural outdoor settings

“…The theories and the majority of the applied research on restorative environments have focused on examining natural settings (Ulrich, 1983, Kaplan & Kaplan, 1991San Juan, Subiza-Pérez, & Vozmediano, 2017). The restorative potential of built urban settings has been largely ignored, and often unpleasant urban scenes have been chosen merely to highlight the restorative qualities of nature (Karmanov & Hamel, 2008;San Juan et al, 2017). As recent evidence suggests that urban settings can also be restorative (Stigsdotter et al, 2017), there is a need to evaluate whether they provide restoration on similar aspects as natural settings.…”