Cities Are Just A State Of Mind

http://nextcity.org//daily/entry/cities-places-addictions-urban-mind-app

Mission Hills Park
San Diego, California
sandiego.gov

Hello Everyone:

Places evoke many feelings.  For example, take a walk in a park, on a sunny day.  Unless you are suffering from bad allergies, chances are you will feel happier.  However, step on a pile of dog manure and your lighter mood turns sours over the prospect of having to scrape the odorous mess off your shoe.Sarah Laskow, in her recent Next City article, "'Urban Mind' App Will Examine How Cities Encourage Our Addictions," writes "...scienists have only recently begun to tease out how place and mental health are intertwined-how more trees might help prevent or alleviate depression..." While there is relatively little information on how the physical environment affects mental, particularly its impact on addiction behavior, empirical data tells us that a person's state of mind is affected by their surroundings.

Man smoking a cigarette
theguardian.com

Is your compulsive need to check your social media feeds, smoke, or have a drink linked to where your live or work?  Does a fast paced environment encourage addictive behaviors as opposed to a place that is bright and airy?  These are some of the questions the Van Alen Institute, New York City, are asking in their new project "Ecologies of Addiction.  The Institute is studying how "vulnerability to addiction is related to environment."  By looking at the less obvious relationship between people and their place, The Institute's director of research Anne Guiney hopes to find out "how we are shaped by urban environments-our minds, our psyche, our well-being."

"Ecologies of Addiction"
impactdesignhub.org

During the project's first phase, a neurologist, two landscape architects, and an artist are developing an app to gather information about how places affect people and their impulse control, on of the risk factors for addictive behavior.  The app goes live at the of the month and will include two hundred London-based volunteers.  Each of the volunteers will download the "Urban Mind" app to their phones and commit to providing answers to questions several times a day, at random times, "about how they're feeling where they are and what sort of place that is."

Lead researcher, Andrea Mechelli, is a neuroscientist at King's College in London and a clinical psychologist.  Mr. Mechelli's speciality is psychosis, and the majority of his patients are at risk for addiction, marijuana in particular.  However, Mr. Mechelli and his team: artist Michael Smyth, landscape architects Johanna Gibbons and Neil Davidson of J & L Gibbons are not focused on people with dangerous additions.  London has the unfortunate reputation of being a city of tipplers and everyone, to some degree, is hooked on their internet connection.  The volunteers were recruited via the King's College website; a serious alcohol-addiction problem was not a requirement to participate in the study.

The "Urban Mind" app for the iPhone
architizer.com

"We're on a spectrum," says Mr. Mechelli.  He continues, "It's not divided between people who are healthy and will never develop addictive behaviors and people who will be addicts.  We all come wit some sort of background vulnerability, and our life experiences, make us more or less vulnerable." The Van Alen Institutes hopes to use design as a way to change places, "cities, landscapes and regions, and, as a result, make people's lives better."  Under the leadership of executive director David van der Leer, the research institute has been exploring the concept of "escape."  Previous parts of studies have centered on physical escapes, however, "Ecologies of Addiction" looks at emotional (not positive) escapes.  Says Mr. van der Leer, "Escape is part of that...Sometimes you want to escape physically.  Sometimes you can only escape mentally.  We were looking understand those types of escapes more."

"Urban Mind" app screen shot
nextcity.org

The Urban Mind app is based on a long standing clinical tool-"ecological momentary assessment-" which asks the subjects, at various intervals, to answer questions about their state of mind throughout the day.  Sarah Laskow writes, "Information gathered in this way can be more revealing than information reported in diaries or during doctor visits."  When Mr. Mechelli read the call for proposals from The Institute and its partner, Sustainable Society Network at Imperial College, calling for a multidisciplinary team to assess the link between the urban environment and addiction-he believed the tool could be used to begin understanding this reciprocal relationship.  He was already acquainted with Johanna Gibbons and Michael Smythe when Mr. Mechelli rang them up to discuss working together on the project.  Both Ms. Gibbons and Mr. Smythe were enthusiastic.  Together, with Ms. Gibbons taking the lead, the trio worked on a definition of the built environment.

After a preliminary background assessment, including demographic questions and some measuring personality, the app asks for simple asks simple questions: "Is there a view outside" and "Is it noisy?" Taking graphic cues, the respondents tap "yes, not sure," or "no." There an option to collect more qualitative data such as sound recordings of photographs.  The app also asks the respondents how much time they spend online and how much alcohol they have consumed.  Blogger speculates that there might be some inaccuracies in reporting the information on the previous two questions on the part of the respondents.  There are other questions intended to measure impulse control, connected to addictive behavior.

Ecologies of Addiction launch
vanalen.org

Sarah Laskow writes, "But that's exactly why collecting data in this way could inform urban planning decisions.  Not everyone has the same reaction to external stimuli, and in the past planners had few resources outside their own experience, to understand how their design might foster mental health."  Mr. Mechelli, the neuroscientist learned from Ms. Gibbons the landscape architect, that planning decisions are frequently based on common sense or assumptions.  However, Mr. Mechelli points out, "But what is common sense for one person is not for others...People bring different assumptions to the table because they have different interests."

Andrea Mechelli continues, "We can use digital technologies to try to understand how the  built environment affects our well-being and our health, maybe it sounds a bit too optimistic, but I think it must be possible to build better environments."  While the Ecologies of Addiction project may sound like it has potential to personalize experiences in built environments, it also holds the possibility of engineering the built environment in such a way that it controls human responses to external stimuli and turn cities into sterile places.  Despite this ambivalence on Blogger's part, Mr. Mechelli adds, "It seems an obvious thing to do, but it's not really happening.  Often urban planning is motivated by other reasons.  Why should not be motivated by people's well-being and health?"

At the most basic level, it is not that difficult to comprehend how the built environment can affect mood, ferreting out the link between addictions and space shed light on one of the darker aspects of urban living.  Yet, Blogger wonders how digital technology will used to deal with addiction behavior?  David van der Leer says, "If we can learn about how addiction is impacted by the environment, we can make many more claims about the urban environment plays a bigger role in our lives than we we really want to admit."  Blogger would like to add this, addiction behavior is also a physical and spiritual malady that affects everyone regardless of socio-economic standing.  It will fascinating to see what data the Ecologies of Addiction project will yield and add to the body to medical and psychological research on addiction.