Jenny Roe

• Managing Director at University of Virginia

Ground murals have been applied in streetscapes to improve walkability, pedestrian safety, and social interaction. However, limited research explores how the design of murals enhances environmental qualities associated with restorative experiences in urban gray streetscapes. This study employed a 3 × 2 mixed design, with color (warm, cool, and achr...

Ground murals have been increasingly applied as a tactical urban design strategy to improve place quality. However, limited research has explored how ground mural design may impact mental health. This study applied a 3 × 2 × 2 mixed design to explore how design features of sidewalk ground murals, specifically color (warm, cool, or achromatic) and p...

Climate despair—a sense of hopelessness about humanity’s ability to pursue a sustainable future—is emerging as a psychosocial threat. Psychological science conceptualizes hopelessness as a cognitive schema characterized by negative expectancies. Climate hopelessness, then, may be conceptualized as a mental model that represents climate change as a...

Research indicates benefits to psychophysiological wellbeing from walking in urban green space compared to other built settings. This study builds on research in older adults extending the protocol to healthy adults (n = 40, mean age = 42 years) exploring the impacts of walking in varying environmental conditions on psychophysiological outcomes (mo...

This study explores the role of architecture in the affordance of hope for people with cancer. Specifically, it revisits ‘enabling places’ debates to understand the influence of spatial design in the experience of cancer care. Combining interviews and focus group data from two separate studies of visitors, volunteers, and staff members of Maggie's...

This paper sets out a framework for exploring flourishing in older age through the lens of what older adults are doing in their lives. Applying a model from positive psychology called personal project analysis (PPA) our study captures a snapshot of older people's goals and their environmental context. Targeting older people aged 80+ we applied PPA...

Adolescents in Thailand’s Deep South are growing up amid protracted instability, yet limited research has left a critical gap in understanding their strengths, stressors, and unmet support needs. This study aimed to gain understanding of daily lives and well-being of orphaned adolescents in the Deep South to inform future intervention efforts. In t...

Color is frequently used in urban outdoor spaces, but little research has studied its psychological effects. This study explores the influence of sidewalk floor color on the restorative walking experience in a busy, inner city street lacking natural greenery. We used an achromatic street view image with no vegetation or trees as control. Red, green...

It is well-evidenced that exposure to natural environments increases psychological restoration as compared to non-natural settings, increasing our ability to recover from stress, low mood, and mental fatigue and encouraging positive social interactions that cultivate social cohesion. However, very few studies have explored how the inclusion of peop...

Domestic (home) gardens provide opportunities for psychological and physical health benefits, yet these environments have received less attention in terms of their therapeutic value compared to other urban green spaces. This is despite their ubiquity and the popularity of gardening as a pastime. This research explored why residents engaged with gar...

Evidence shows green space exposure has beneficial impacts on psychological and physiological wellbeing. However, aesthetic differences in color use in cultivated garden landscapes on wellbeing remains unexplored. This study investigates how warm and cool colored garden landscapes affect psychological and physiological wellbeing and how responses d...

Britain in Bloom is a UK national campaign to help people improve their local environment through gardening, a popular and accessible pastime. This research presents a framework to understand the relationships between gardeners and their front gardens (yards). Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of focus group data with 20 Britain in Bloom gar...

Perspective written in response to # ERSS-S-20-01516.

Overcrowding, noise and air pollution, long commutes and lack of daylight can take a huge toll on the mental well-being of city-dwellers. With mental healthcare services under increasing pressure, could a better approach to urban design and planning provide a solution? The restrictions faced by city residents around the world during the COVID-19 pa...

Residential gardens make up 30% of urban space in the UK, yet unlike many other green space typologies, their role in the health and well-being agenda has largely been overlooked. A horticultural intervention introduced ornamental plants to 38 previously bare front gardens (≈ 10 m 2) within an economically deprived region of North England, UK. Meas...

The benefits of walking in older age include improved cognitive health (e.g., mental alertness, improved memory functioning) and a reduced risk of stress, depression and dementia. However, research capturing the benefits of walking among older people in real-time as they navigate their world is currently very limited. This study explores cognitive...

CITY KNOW-HOW Worrying trends in terms of human health and planetary health are receiving increasing global concern. City leadership, planning and development all place the constraints on urban behaviours and lifestyles, usually accelerating the problems. It is imperative that human health and environmental impacts become core foci in urban policie...

This perspective article proposes an agenda to investigate the impacts of front gardens (yards) on health and well-being. As front gardens are increasingly being paved over, significant ecological benefits will be lost. In addition, urban green infrastructure has a measurable role to play in addressing major public health issues related to mental h...

A growing body of empirical evidence is revealing the value of nature experience for mental health. With rapid urbanization and declines in human contact with nature globally, crucial decisions must be made about how to preserve and enhance opportunities for nature experience. Here, we first provide points of consensus across the natural, social, a...

Neurourbanism looks to understand the relationship between urban environments and mental well-being and is well placed to assess the role of these environments on the urbanised and ageing global population. This study builds on research using mobile electroencephalography (EEG) to understand the impact of urban environments (busy, quiet and green u...

High prevalence of poor mental health is a major public health problem. Natural environments may contribute to mitigating stress and enhancing health. However, there is little evidence on whether community-level interventions intended to increase exposure to natural environments can improve mental health and related behaviours. In the first study o...

Increasing access to urban waterfronts holds much promise for promoting healthy behaviors. While many US cities are revitalizing their waterfronts, the health and well-being benefits associated with these urban design initiatives are largely unknown. Tactical urban interventions (such as parklets and pop-ups) are short-term projects that experiment...

Young people today face a number of unprecedented social, cultural and economic challenges that pose a threat to their mental wellbeing. This includes rapid urbanization, globalisation and migration. It is increasingly recognised that intersectoral and multicomponent action is required to meet these challenges - yet so far the role of urban plannin...

Background Contact with natural environments can bring health benefits, but research is lacking on how changes in access to natural environments might improve health, especially for deprived populations. Objective To evaluate the health impacts of woodland environment interventions intended to increase communities’ engagement with these woodlands....

To advance understanding of the geographies of age segregation, this paper examines the intersectional social dynamics of age‐segregated environments, considering how migration interacts with age segregation to breed sameness or diversity in ageing environments. We juxtapose findings drawn from two research projects, the first on international reti...

This paper reports seasonal difference in light exposures and health and wellbeing indicators as well as predictors of sleep quality parameters in care home dwelling older adults. The quality of lighting in the indoor environment can impact upon the health and wellbeing of building occupants. For older adults in care homes poor light exposure has b...

Please note that the legend to Fig. 1 has been modified since this article was originally published, and also that in Tables 2, 3 and 4, R[2] was corrected to (the now correct) R squared.

Urban green space epidemiological studies increasing report effect sizes for health and wellbeing outcomes stratified by gender, but few studies have specifically investigated gender differences in relationships between green space and health and wellbeing. Differences in the strength and direction of green space effect sizes across population subg...

This study follows previous research showing how green space quantity and contact with nature (via access to gardens/allotments) helps mitigate stress in people living in deprived urban environments (Ward Thompson et al., 2016). However, little is known about how these environments aid stress mitigation nor how stress levels vary in a population ex...

This article sets out an urban health model and conceptual framework for researching environments that support adolescent health and wellbeing. Our focus is on 10–19 year olds, an age group that has been neglected by researchers in the otherwise emerging and dynamic field of design and health over the past decade. The Ten Questions address adolesce...

Many studies have investigated links between amount of green space in the environment and mental health, but only a small number have reported on gender differences in relationships. Male/female differences in relationships between green space quantity (GSQ) and two self-reported measures of mental health – perceived stress (PSS) and mental wellbei...

Abstract accepted for oral presentation at ISEE2017.

This research directly assesses older people’s neural activation in response to a changing urban environment while walking, as measured by electroencephalography (EEG). The study builds on previous research that shows changes in cortical activity while moving through different urban settings. The current study extends this methodology to explore pr...

Objective This article reports summer verses winter seasonal variations across a suite of blue light, illuminance levels and health and well-being indicators. Background The quality of lighting in care homes has been assessed previously, yet seasonal comparisons and the associations with sleep quality are limited. This exploratory study investigat...

Very little is known about how differences in use and perceptions of urban green space impact on the general health of black and minority ethnic (BME) groups. BME groups in the UK suffer from poorer health and a wide range of environmental inequalities that include poorer access to urban green space and poorer quality of green space provision. This...

Through this assessment, the authors and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) secretariat are providing an objective evaluation and analysis of the pan-European environment designed to support environmental decision-making at multiple scales. In this assessment, the judgement of experts is applied to existing knowledge to provide scienti...

Environment-health research has shown significant relationships between the quantity of green space in deprived urban neighbourhoods and people's stress levels. The focus of this paper is the nature of access to green space (i.e., its quantity or use) necessary before any health benefit is found. It draws on a cross-sectional survey of 406 adults i...

This paper reports a qualitative study of thriving older people and illustrates the findings with design fiction. Design research has been criticized as "solutionist" i.e. solving problems that don't exist or providing "quick fixes" for complex social, political and environmental problems. We respond to this critique by presenting a "solutionist" b...

This paper describes two case studies from Scotland, UK, exploring links between access to green space, perceptions of and activities in green space, and health and quality of life. One study involved a natural experiment to study the effects of improvements to woodlands near a disadvantaged urban community, compared with a similar community withou...

The central visual field is particularly affected in age-related macular degeneration (AMD), and this can impinge on a variety of functional tasks, including navigation, which can affect activities of daily living. It has been difficult to assess navigational function under standardised conditions. The aim of this study is to examine gaze function...

Melanopsin-expressing photosensitive retinal ganglion cells form a blue-light-sensitive non-visual system mediating diverse physiological effects including circadian entrainment and cognitive alertness. Reduced blue wavelength retinal illumination through cataract formation is thought to blunt these responses while cataract surgery and intraocular...

Green space in the residential environment is associated with a range of health benefits but there is very little evidence on the impacts of environmental interventions in nearby green space on patterns of use, physical activity, or perceptions of the neighbourhood environment. This paper presents the results of a study involving a natural experime...

Contact with green space in the environment has been associated with mental health benefits, but the mechanism underpinning this association is not clear. This study extends an earlier exploratory study showing that more green space in deprived urban neighbourhoods in Scotland is linked to lower levels of perceived stress and improved physiological...

There is a growing body of evidence that suggests that green spaces may positively influence psychological well-being. This project is designed to take advantage of a natural experiment where planned physical and social interventions to enhance access to natural environments in deprived communities provide an opportunity to prospectively assess imp...

Background Researchers in environmental psychology, health studies and urban design are interested in the relationship between the environment, behaviour settings and emotions. In particular, happiness, or the presence of positive emotional mindsets, broadens an individual's thought-action repertoire with positive benefits to physical and intellect...

Background Researchers in environmental psychology have consistently shown the restorative potential of natural – over urban-settings using video/photographic experiments in laboratory settings applying subjectively rated scales. But few studies have employed objective indicators of emotional response. This study investigates the use of electroence...

This paper explores wellbeing from the perspective of the psychological dynamics underlying adolescents' relationship with place. It uses a dynamic model of wellbeing called personal project analysis (PPA) which captures the concept of 'flourishing', defined as functioning well in your activities, strivings and interactions with the world [1]. Usin...

Green space has been associated with a wide range of health benefits, including stress reduction, but much pertinent evidence has relied on self-reported health indicators or experiments in artificially controlled environmental conditions. Little research has been reported using ecologically valid objective measures with participants in their every...

Research has shown that the context for psychological restoration and the amount of change can vary amongst adults with different mental health states. There is, however, little evidence of this process in young people. This paper reports on a study which compares the restorative outcomes for adolescents (aged 11) when spending time in an outdoor e...

The physical and social participatory properties of landscapes have been explored using affordance theory but, as yet, the affective dimension of affordances is ill-defined. This paper sets out a framework for integrating affect within the affordance perceptual model. In doing so, it draws on two established models of emotion that identify ‘valence...

People differ in their potential for psychological restoration but there is little evidence on the role of varying mental health state or settings in the process. This paper reports two quasi-experiments which compare the restorative benefits of walking in urban and rural settings in two groups of adults with good and poor mental health. Two aspect...

UK policy interest in the health effects of the outdoors has grown rapidly in recent years. In parallel, the research community's effort to strengthen the evidence base for the relationships between the outdoors and health has also increased. However, little has been done to explore quantitative secondary public data sets conducted by government de...

This article reports on recent research highlighting the benefits of the outdoor learning programme 'Forest School' on the physical activity and mental well-being of children and adolescents in the UK.