Urban greenery to counter homogenization of urban form?

Abstract

Urban landscapes across the globe are undergoing significant transformations, leading to the homogenization of urban form (Lemoine-Rodríguez et al. 2020). Homogenization of urban morphology also leads to converging patterns in the natural environment within cities (Lokatis and Jeschke, 2022). The implications of urban morphological homogenization stretch beyond environmental implications. Indeed, a recent study identified a loss of emotions in residents when experiencing homogenous peri-urban landscapes, thus affecting people’s place attachment as well as their willingness to engage with places (Grêt-Regamey and Galleguillos-Torres, 2022). Not only urban built environments affect human well-being, but also urban greenery.

Urban green spaces offer a range of environmental and health benefits. For instance, access to greenspaces has been identified as crucial for physical and mental health and wellbeing (McDonald et al., 2023). Exposure to urban green space has been shown to contribute to stress reduction through its calming and restorative effects (Hedblom et al., 2019). While the restorative effect of urban green spaces has been demonstrated in previous studies, little is known about how the interaction between urban form and greenery affects peoples’ responses to urban residential environments. The present study employs an experimental approach combining physiological and cognitive measures to assess people’s responses to urban residential scenes within virtual reality environments. The scenes represent five different types of neighborhoods varying according to three scenarios of greenery (no green, tidy green, biodiverse green). Measurements include electrodermal activity, a measure of unconscious physiological response used as an indicator for affect, as well as preference and self-rated emotions, representing cognitive responses.

Findings indicate that adding greenery to a place indeed does improve the perception of a place, although not as much as places that were already positively rated without added greenery. Therefore, to improve people’s well-being, it is important for planners to focus on the character of a place and get away from planning homogenous neighborhoods.