Explaining the Conceptual Model of Stress Relief Urban Planning

Introduction :

Cities are expanding at a very fast pace, especially in Northeast Africa and Southwest Asia [1]. In 2007, the world’s urban population exceeded 50% for the first time in history, and this ratio is constantly growing [2]. According to predictions made in 2050, about 70% of the world’s population will live in cities [3] and about 90% of this growth will happen in Africa and Asia [4]. Although infrastructure, socioeconomic conditions, nutrition, and health care services are better in cities than in rural areas, living in an urban environment has long been recognized as a risk factor for mental illness [5]. Considering the mentioned advantages, creating a balance between these two issues requires a better understanding of the interaction between urban life and mental health [6]. The impact of urbanization on mental health is very significant and due to the forecast of the increase in the urban population, it is likely to increase in the next few decades [1]. Considering its role as an essential component of public health, mental health is a very important issue and has profound effects on individuals, societies, and the economy [7], and its promotion is necessary to increase the quality of life and resilience of society [8]. According to the World Health Organization report, mental health disorders have become one of the biggest threats to human health in 2020. This also has consequences for economic prosperity, because stress, depression, and anxiety have a great impact on people’s work efficiency [9]. Also, one out of every five adults in the world suffers from a mental disorder [10] and 13% of global diseases have a mental origin [11]. The importance of the relationship between urban life and mental health is so great that the World Psychiatric Association has established a scientific department of urban mental health to study it further [12]. According to the national survey of mental health in Iran, 23.6% of people who have been investigated need psychological interventions and 14.6% of people suffer from anxiety disorder [13]. While few studies have addressed the potential links between aspects of the built environment and mental health, studies in this area have mostly focused on physical health [14].Exposure to high stress and the resulting injuries are the most important factors in increasing the risk of mental disorders [15]. City residents are exposed to higher levels of stressful factors, and exposure to more stress may cause the prevalence of stress-related mental illnesses among city residents [16]. In fact, the stress of modern urban life can be a basis for developing psychosis and mental disorders [17]. In addition to being one of the important causes of physical diseases (such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and gastrointestinal diseases) and mental diseases (such as depression, schizophrenia, and isolation of people), urban stress also increases the number of moral abnormalities and reduces the security of citizens. Besides, the stress of the imposition of high medical costs on citizens also causes the loss of human capital in the city. For this reason, it is necessary for urban planners and designers to consider the mental peace of citizens as an important principle in their plans and designs and to avoid actions that fuel this mental confusion. In fact, considering that creating a healthy urban environment is the main priority of policy-makers [18] and urban stress is increasing in the cities of the world [19], it is necessary to formulate planned urbanization to prevent the negative effects of urban life[20]. Since the beginning of the 20th century, many studies have investigated the relationship between urbanization and stress and effective solutions to it with different approaches. But so far, no study has been done in the direction of urban planning that treats stress in a way that takes into account all the indicators that affect urban stress, discovers the most important indicators based on the connections between them, and presents a conceptual model that affects it. For this purpose, this research has been conducted to analyze the content of previous studies and identify the most important indicators, and present a conceptual model of urban planning that treats stress.

This research is a review and the research method is qualitative. Documentary and library studies were used to collect data and a content analysis method was used to analyze them. In fact, this research analyzes library documents in four basic steps using an interpretive approach and tries to identify, analyze, and explain the connections between stress-relieving urban planning indicators based on the extracted text codes.

The research findings indicate that urban mental health and urban stress have direct and indirect bilateral effects. The indicators extracted from theoretical studies are classified into two groups. The first group increases urban stress and consequently reduces urban mental health and includes cultural and mental deprivation, building density, sensory overload, modern architectural style, traffic density (busy roads), stressful urban design, air pollution, immigration, crime, social deprivation, violence, economic deprivation, being an ethnic minority, population density, amount of time pressure and waste of time and noise pollution. The second group reduces urban stress and consequently improves mental health and includes access to resources and services, social support, social capital, spatial diversity, social diversity, social interactions, local integration, green space and access to it, sense of belonging, identity, justice in the city, social cohesion, participation level, residential stability, vitality, degree of resilience, control, and prediction of the environment and visibility to the city environment (up to 10 meters). It should be mentioned that finally, after examining the final effects and consequences of urban planning, the stress treatment of improving the quality of life in urban environments has been identified as the most important and comprehensive effect of this planning.

As a result, by reducing cultural and psychological deprivation, building density, sensory overload, modern architectural style, traffic density (busy roads), stressful urban design, air pollution, immigration, crime, social deprivation, violence, and economic deprivation, being an ethnic minority, population density, the amount of time pressure and waste of time, noise pollution, increasing access to resources and services, social support, social capital, spatial diversity, social diversity, social interactions, local integration, green space and access to it, sense of belonging, identity, justice in the city, social cohesion, level of participation, residential stability, vitality, level of resilience, control, prediction of the environment, and visibility to the city environment (up to 10 meters) can greatly reduce urban stress and improve the urban psyche health. These indicators were selected after a comprehensive review of the theoretical literature and they cover all the identified indicators according to the effects they have on other indicators and the effects they get from them.