Depression or recovery? A study of the influencing elements of urban street environments to alleviate mental stress

Abstract

Studies have shown that a well-designed urban environment can have the same stress-reducing capacity as the natural environment. This may provide an opportunity to improve population health. In this study, we used a combination of traditional interviews and biosensing techniques to simulate the effects of living streets on emotional states within the First Ring Road of Chengdu City, and then scientifically analyzed the health effects of street environments. Within the First Ring Road of Chengdu City, we extracted the characteristics of the street environment through real-life perception experiments, and extensively photographed and sampled the living streets in the main urban area of Chengdu City, and collected the Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals of the people when they viewed different street photographs, so as to analyze the correlation between the characteristics of the street environment and the mental health of the people. The results show that the environmental characteristics of living streets that affect people's psychological perception are: green looking ratio, motor vehicle presence rate, degree of walkability, environmental complexity, building enclosure, facility distribution rate, sky visibility, elevation permeability, slow-moving occurrences and color richness. Motor vehicle presence rate and environmental complexity had a significant positive correlation with boredom, elevation permeability had a significant positive correlation with engagement mood, green looking ratio and building enclosure had a significant positive correlation with interest mood, and environmental complexity had a significant negative correlation with interest mood.

Keywords

• Urban pressure
• Street environment
• Neurourbanism
• Stress relief
• EEG
• Characteristic elements