CITY, PSYCHOLOGY, PLACE: AN URBAN PSYCHOLOGY SUMMIT
The global rise in urban living poses many challenges for city leadership: climate, air quality, cohesion and inequality are but a few. Yet poor levels of urban mental health – sometimes twice as bad as non-urban – are a hidden issue of deep concern, and whilst cities can create a kind of psychological robustness, they can also have impacts on emotional health.
70% of the world will live in a city by 2050 – the UK is already about 80% – yet 100 years ago it was nearer 20%. We are highly adaptable, but cities are new in evolutionary terms, so we need to question their emotional impacts, and how accentuate the positive.
As Danish architect Jan Gehl put it: ‘we know more about what makes a good habitat for mountain gorillas than we do about living in our own cities’. Why is it then that psychology, the discipline concerned most with emotional wellbeing, is almost absent from urban policy?
Last week, psychologists, psychiatrists, economists and urbanists from the UK, US and Europe gathered to address exactly this issue, to ask: whether we need an ‘urban psychology’; what the biggest areas of concern are; and how we might make cities that better help people develop from pre-birth onwards.
All the presentations and videos of key speakers can be found here
New thinking needed for an urban age
‘City, Psychology, Place’ was Europe’s first Urban Psychology Summit, hosted by the Heseltine Institute at Liverpool University’s London Campus, in association with Chris Murray and Charles Landry. It explored links between: urban renewal policy choices and serious mental and physical health impacts; how experience of ‘place’ shapes individuals and communities; whether dominant personality types in an area help determine economic success; what neuroscience can tell us about urban living; and localised health and care, and national NHS strategies for urban mental health.
It was an interactive, agenda setting event aiming to create a new dialogue to help cities and citizens, but also to generate influence and change. Key points were as follows.
Think of ‘people and place’ together, not siloed. Experience of ‘place’ determines much of our development and wellbeing. Understanding the psychological impact of policy and planning has to become a core concept for urban leadership. Our regulatory framework assesses impacts for the environment and economy, but not so much for individual wellbeing.
Make the evidence and tools available and useable. There is a vast well of untapped resources within psychology for those who make and manage cities, but they are largely unknown and can be difficult to access or turn into action. Simple ways of doing this need to be found.
Understand cities as ‘ego systems’ as well as eco systems. We still too often see cities through a mechanical not a human lens, machines to be fixed, not organic living entities. We need smart cities, but we need them to be emotionally intelligent places too that understand basic human need.
More research into urban issues and solutions from a psychological perspective. The psychological impacts of deprivation and inequality; what makes for ‘good’ engagement; how to unlock community assets and build in psychological resilience to urban environments, were all discussed.
To enable the above, two other things need to happen.
Firstly, psychology itself needs to engage more with the political and democratic spheres, and in doing so create much wider awareness of how it can help policy makers and influencers achieve shared goals.
Secondly, we have to recognise the unique roles and abilities of cities, for example to cohere multiple identities toward a common cause in a way nation’s struggle to do.
Some of the biggest issues we face, set out at the beginning above, also have a psychological component to their cause, and to their solution. Cities are the level at which these play out, and they must be empowered to tackle them. In the UK, this means greater devolution from the centre, but it also means a broadening out of the current toolkit with which cities equip themselves, to include psychology.
A strong cast list included the following.
- Sara Niblock, CEO UK Council of Psychotherapists (Chair)
- Mindy Fullilove, Professor of Urban Policy & Health, The New School, New York
- Tim Kendall, National Clinical Director for Mental Health, NHS England
- Jon Rouse, Chief Officer, Greater Manchester Health & Social Care Partnership
- Layla McKay, Director, Centre for Urban Design and Mental Health
- Matt Bell, Director of Communications Director, Lendlease (Euston Project)
- Kathy McArdle, Director of Cities and UK, British Council;
- Ebinehita Iyere, Juventis
- Helena Marujo,World Happiness Summitand Lisbon University
- Araceli Camargo, Neuroscientist, co-Founder Centric Lab
- Paula Reavey, Professor of Psychology, London South Bank University
- Steve Brown, Professor of Social & Organisational Psychology, The Open University
- Ron Martin, Professor of Economic Geography, University of Cambridge
- Loretta Lees, University of Leicester
Their presentations will be uploaded at this link www.liverpool.ac.uk/heseltine-institute/.
