The Topodiverse City: Urban Form for Subjective Well-Being

Karl Samuelsson

doi:10.3389/fbuil.2021.735221

Abstract

Research is now better than ever able to unveil how urban inhabitants’ movement, behavior and experiences relate to the urban forms in which they take place. Consequently, urban form might increasingly be able to function as a focal point for different strands of research that focus on sustainable urban life, and as a link between research and planning practice through the development of empirically informed design principles. Drawing on literature from urban morphology, complex systems analysis, environmental psychology, and neuroscience, I provide a wide-angle view of how urban form relates to subjective well-being through movement, social and economic activity, experiences and psychological restoration. I propose three principles for urban form that could promote subjective well-being while also mitigating the environmental impact of cities in industrialized societies. The principles revolve around so-called topodiversity, meaning variation across an urban area in spatial conditions that allows subjective well-being to be promoted through several different pathways. The principles together suggest an urban form that I call the topodiverse city. The topodiverse city displays a polycentric structure and is more spatially contained than the sprawling city, yet not as compact as the dense city. I also propose indicators to measure the principles using mostly openly available data and analysis methods, to further research on how urban form can enable urban subjective well-being with low environmental impact.

Highlights

The world is both urbanizing and on an unsustainable trajectory
Urban form might increasingly be able to function as a focal point for different strands of research that deal with sustainable urban life
The principles together point towards the topodiverse city as a desirable urban form distinct from both the dense city and the sprawling city

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The world is both urbanizing and on an unsustainable trajectory. industrialized societies must urgently address the dual issues of catering to the urban populations’ well-being and ease the cities’ pressure on the planet. The diversity of kinds of experience within the same neighborhood is greatest in areas of intermediate centrality, as opposed to the most connected areas that are dominated by negative experiences (Samuelsson et al, 2019) Such evidence suggests the possibility of urban environments that promote subjective well-being through access via active movement to the cities’ varied social and economic resources while avoiding the psychological toll of crowding. Principle 1 is to ensure that people through active movement can use urban environments as a resource to support their subjective well-being Even though they are mutualistic, street network configuration and distribution of destinations are separate dimensions of environments’ ability to uphold street life (Berghauser Pont et al, 2019), and of travel mode choices (Ewing and Cervero, 2010; Barrington-Leigh and Millard-Ball, 2019). It would allow large-scale master planning of cities and meso-scale planning of neighborhoods to harmonize around the dual issues of improving inhabitants’ wellbeing and mitigating environmental impact

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Findings

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT