Stress and city

Abstract

Extensive research conducted by the World Health Organization suggests that stress is one of the primary health challenges of the Twenty-First century. When the stress response does not switch off, it not only affects the immune system, but also raises the risk of psychiatric diseases. Recent research elucidates that the risk of schizophrenia and other mental-health disorders keep rapidly increasing, and city life is one of the main factors leading to such crises. According to a study in Nature, published by psychiatrists Florian Lederbogen et al., city dwellers are more sensitive and susceptible to certain stress stimuli in opposition to countryside dwellers, further proving that city life makes a significant difference (Lederbogen, 2011). Although cities have abundant benefits such as convenience of life and copious job opportunities, such problems can not be neglected now since over half of the population live in cities world-wide.

According to Adli, social density and social isolation are the main causes of stress in cites (Adli, 2013). He proposes various solutions to reduce the problem, and minimizing the density is one of the solutions to counter the problems arising from high density. Despite appearing to be the most direct and effective way to reduce the problem, reasons such as the economic pursuit from the land and social need of gathering in most cities renders it unfeasible.
The situation raises an interesting question: how to reduce the stress level while maintaining or even increasing the density in the city?

This is a problem and a question that is highly related to living environment in the field of urbanism, but there is limited research or design in the field to explore this discourse from this perspective based on my preliminary research. To advance this discussion, I intend to carry out an explorative research exploring the dynamic relationship between stress (wellbeing of people) and the city (high density). The research tries to uncover the possible spatial measures to reduce the stress in the context of high density. It is carried out and illustrated in the case of Chinese urban immigrants who are highly vulnerable to stress related issues and have to live in highly dense living environment (urban village) in cities.