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

Abstract

Background:Stress poses a major issue in our modern society, making restoration an important research focus. Restoration likelihood has mostly been observed in nature, which was compared with urban environments that have little restorative potential, eg, industrial areas. However, many people reside in and need to find restoration in cities. The main aim of this review is to summarize research that has focused on investigating restoration possibilities in urban environments and the environmental elements interacting with the restoration likelihood of an urban environment.Method:This review focuses on studies addressing the topic of restoration possibilities in urban settings in built and human-made natural urban environments. The studies were searched via Google Scholar, PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, and PSYNDEX. All studies concerned with restoration in urban environments were included. However, studies concerned with nonoriginal data, solely investigating effects of natural environments or treating urban environments as a control for restoration in nature, were excluded from the review. Overall, 39 studies corresponded to the criteria and were included.Results:Natural elements in urban environments have a restorative potential and can increase the restorativeness of urban settings. Furthermore, built urban environments vary in their restorative potential, but promising results have been uncovered as well. Architectural elements, cultural, and leisure areas had a restorative value, whereas the findings on streets and residential areas differ. In sum, many urban locations can have restorative effects, but these effects may be influenced by factors such as cultural background, age, social components, and individual dispositions.Discussion:Certain urban environments hold a restorative potential. However, the literature on restoration in urban environments is still quite scarce and therefore has been of little practical use. Even though applying the findings to real-life environments is desirable, it might prove difficult, considering the overall sparse evidence. More research on the predictors of restoration likelihood (eg, social factors), generational and cultural differences, and comparisons between natural and urban environments is recommended.

Everyday Use of the City Cemetery: A Study of Environmental Qualities and Perceived Restorativeness in a Scottish Context

“…With the growing urban population and the need for good mental health in coping with pressurised modern lifestyles [30], improving restorativeness in contemporary cities becomes an increasingly significant research topic. Previous empirical findings generally show that urban greenspace can provide a liveable, peaceful, and walkable environment that encourages perceived restorativeness [31]. In terms of usage, running in parks or outside towns was found to have a positive association with perceived restorativeness [32].…”

Seeing nature from low to high levels: Mechanisms underlying the restorative effects of viewing nature images

“…In fact, they were sourced from a stock image database in which rather beautiful and high-quality images are included. Furthermore, we selected urban areas that include not only streetscapes and industrial areas, as for example in Berman et al ( 2008), but also inner city, historic, and residential areas that might be rated as more restorative and beautiful (e.g., Karmanov & Hamel, 2008;Weber & Trojan, 2018). However, note that Study 1 as well as both studies reported in Authors ( 2021) confirmed that our urban images were (explicitly and implicitly) rated as significantly less restorative than the nature images.…”

“…The issue of the diversity of urban environments raises the question what characteristics generally lead to the non-positive effects on restoration-related measures (compared to nature stimuli; for a related discussion, see Berto, 2020; Hicks et al, 2020aHicks et al, , 2020b. Similarly, several researchers emphasized considering the diversity of urban environments and showed restorative effects for urban areas as well (Collado & Manrique, 2020;Scopelliti et al, 2019;Staats et al, 2016;Weber & Trojan, 2018).…”

“…We used a well-controlled set of different stimuli with a dichotomous categorization of environments (see Figure 1A), although we are aware of the limitations of this dichotomization (cf., Staats et al, 2016;Weber & Trojan, 2018). Since our aim was to investigate the underlying mechanisms of effects evoked by such stimulus sets or in-situ environments (e.g., Berman et al, 2008;Stevenson et al, 2018;Valtchanov & Ellard, 2015), we focused on respective images.…”

Does Young Adults’ Neighborhood Environment Affect Their Depressive Mood? Insights from the 2019 Korean Community Health Survey

“…The presence of green areas and public spaces, a neighborhood's traffic conditions and safety, and trust between neighbors have all been found to affect people's depressive moods. A lack of green space has been found to cause depressive mood in several studies [17] and exposure to the natural environment has been found to help relieve depressive moods and reduce stress [50]. Communal space in neighborhood environments has been found to have a positive impact on relieving depressive mood by helping people develop strong social relationships [51].…”