citylab

Children play in a large green space in the redeveloped Regent Park neighborhood.   DanielsCorp Why Park Designers Need to Think More About Mental Health KIERAN DELAMONT   NOV 21, 2016 One Toronto neighborhood serves as an example of the limitations in drawing links between happier residents and the amount of green space they have access to. SHARE TWEET It’s 10 a.m. on a warm August morning in Regent Park, a neighborhood in the east end of downtown Toronto that has historically been defined by its public housing and poverty. Nadha Hassen, a junior fellow at Toronto’s Wellesley Institute, and her colleagues are here hosting a walking tour to get residents of Regent Park out to talk about how parks interact with mental health, both individually and across the community. Except the residents aren’t showing up. Hassen is fighting hard to put on a positive face, but she seems concerned while repeatedly checking her phone. Word eventually comes in: gunshots in t...

A woman reads on a rooftop garden in a residential area of Tokyo.   Yuriko Nakao/Reuters Designing a Megacity for Mental Health MIMI KIRK   AUG 21, 2017 A new report assesses how Tokyo’s infrastructure affects residents’ emotional well-being, offering lessons for other cities. SHARE TWEET The Tokyo-based psychiatrist Layla McCay says that though the prevalence of mental illness in Japan is comparable to other countries, people don’t talk about it much. “There can be more of a stigma associated with it than in the West,” she says. Only one in five people in Japan with mental illness seek help, while in the United States, that figure is  at least one in two . Though the Japanese may not discuss mental health as Westerners do, they are still concerned about it. “Urban policymakers in Japan often talk about the problem of stress and how to alleviate it,” McCay says. One example,  k aroshi ,  or “death from overwork ,” often by stroke, heart atta...

Madison McVeigh/CityLab The Case for Rooms KATE WAGNER   AUG 6, 2018 It’s time to end the tyranny of open-concept interior design. SHARE TWEET If someone asked me five years ago whether or not I thought the open floor plan would still be popular, I would have said no. Domestic architecture seemed to be taking a turn toward the rustic. Today, “Farmhouse” and “Craftsman” modern designs, harkening back to the American vernacular tradition (complete with shiplap walls), are a tour-de-force. But I would have been wrong. Although these houses bring all the exterior trappings of beloved vernacular houses of the past, they do not extend that to the interior plans. In fact, the open concepts from the oversized houses of the pre-recession era have only gotten  more  open. Much has been written about the open floor plan: how it came to be, why it is bad (or good), whether it should or shouldn’t be applied to existing housing. The open floor plan as we currentl...

Barcelona's El Born neighborhood, where a superblock has already been installed.  OK Apartment/Flickr Barcelona’s Car-Taming ‘Superblocks’ Meet Resistance FEARGUS O'SULLIVAN   JAN 20, 2017 The plan to ban through traffic from much of the city could still be a game-changing model. SHARE TWEET Barcelona’s plans to slash car traffic may be some of the most innovative in the world, but right now their introduction isn’t going all that smoothly. Since last year, the city has been introducing so-called superblocks. These are square sections of the city’s grid made up of nine actual blocks, with a combined area of just under 40 acres, where through traffic is permitted only on perimeter roads. The idea of these superblocks is to cut pollution and car collisions while making more space for pedestrians and cyclists. As yet, it seems that not everyone is convinced. Last Sunday, some residents in Barcelona’s  Poblenou  neighborhood took to the streets to...